When we moved on board a few weeks ago we quickly made the salon and aft cabin comfortable and, on the surface at least, reasonably organised. This however has been at the expense of the forward cabin where anything we have yet to find a home for has been dumped. The bunk bed cabin has rapidly taken on the role of Rick’s boat shed. Now anyone who read my earlier blog, The Curious Case of the Never Emptying Shed will appreciate that this is a bit of a worry.

With guests soon joining us to stay overnight the time has come to get sorted. By yachting standards Raya has a lot of storage space, but a lot of it is under sofa cushions, under beds and under the floor in the bilges, so not immediately accessible. Many of the the cupboards are stuffed full of spares that came with her from her previous life and things that “looked useful” from the refit and during the move. The task this weekend was to work our way through everything, finding it a home and recording where it is on the Ipad master inventory.

With some items the first step has to be actually working out what they are and then, how often we might need them. The less recognisable and the less regularly used an item the deeper in storage they can go. Tools have to compete with food and first aid supplies with engine spares for the most easily accessed areas. And of course all of this is guess work because we won’t really know what or how we will use things until we get going.

However as is the way with these things, not much organising has actually got done, everything seems to take much longer on a boat and distractions are plentiful.

Today the forecast grey, cold day turned out to be warm and sunny, so we abandoned the mess to enjoy the sunshine by working on jobs outside.

One of these was to service a winch. a dirty and slightly daunting job with dozens of interlocking pieces, each coated in thick grease. We seem to be using copious amounts of paper towel for every job, never mind the food and spares, the question is can we find enough storage space for all the kitchen towel we will need to get us around the world.

Eventually, cleaned up and one more roll of paper towel down, the innards of the winch lay polished and gleaming on the salon table, let’s hope Rick can remember how to get it back together!

Tomorrows jobs – sort out storage and reassemble winch. Oh yes, and the heating engineer is coming back, the air-conditioning is being serviced, the riggers are hopefully sorting a problem with the mast furler, the last blind is being put in place in the salon, the Editor of Sailing Today is coming to talk to us, I have to sort out a tenancy agreement on the new buy to let house that finally completed last week and then of course we need to buy more kitchen roll.