We moved everything aboard on July 20 of this year – all set for a 2 week holiday.  Last night we finally moved back to the house.  When we returned from our holiday it was hot and it had been a long day and I suggested that we should just stay at the boat for a day or two – a day or two stretched to one week, and then another.  I am not sure what would have finally driven me home – other than the arrival tonight of one of our favorite furry house-guests.

We have been on the boat for seven weeks!  Seven weeks – and I loved it.  True we were not “true livaboards” in that we did have the house to go back to to do laundry – but that is the only reason that I went home in the last 7 weeks – Owen was there more, as he works from home much of the time.

I cannot say how much I enjoyed being down on the boat – being able to sit out in the cockpit and enjoy a nice fresh breeze when our house was baking away up the hill, or curling up below deck with my book – yes, I know that I can curl up at home with a book but a lot of time, we walk in, turn on the TV and then it is on all night.  It is so easy to get sucked into some stupid show that you are not even really watching, or to watch a rerun you have seen 3 times.  On the boat I read, or I did crosswords, or I sat in the cockpit and watched the stars.  Perhaps it is a lesson to take back to the house – watch less TV!  The other thing that I did not do on the boat was scroll through Facebook for hours on end – the wifi at the marina is not great, and combine that with a steel boat and I could not log on at all – so if I wanted to be online, it was on my data – so I just didn’t sit there reloading Facebook or Pinterest.

The marina is also so social – walking down the docks you are stopping to chat with the liveaboards who are on the same dock, or to chat with visiting boaters who are moored on the visitors dock or tucked into temporarily vacant slips.   There was music on the docks a couple of nights each week – I would often find myself pausing to listen for a bit before I headed to our slip.   Of course I will chat with my neighbor if we happen to come home at the same time, and occasionally a neighbor will stop to chat if we are working in the yard and they are out walking – but that is the exception – not the norm.

Oh – and did I mention that I can vacuum the whole boat with my dustbuster!?  And our head is tiny – much easier to clean.  I didn’t even miss the dishwasher (most of the time!).  I spent a couple of nights this past week getting the house back to a passable state – cleaning the bathroom took me most of one evening – vacuuming another.    And we have so much STUFF at home!  Every time I consider that at some point all that stuff either needs to go or go to storage, I get a little pang of anxiety.

And then there was the coffee – for 7 weeks I have had wonderful french press coffee – this morning I had the drip maker all set to go and the coffee was ready for me when I walked into the kitchen – but it was terrible – tasteless, bland…   maybe I didn’t make it strong enough this morning but maybe, it is that I really, really love French Press coffee – I think my drip maker might have just been retired!

Okay – one more thing that I already miss from the boat – walking up the dock in the morning – it is such a refreshing start to the day to have that short walk up the dock – even when you get scared by rogue Otters like I did yesterday!  I didn’t even consider the fact that it was raining this morning as a reason to be happy that I did not have to walk up the docks.

I know it would be a whole different animal being down there all winter – when it is pouring rain for days on end, or (please not this year!) snowing – but then it would also be so cozy to be curled up listening to the rain on the deck with the heater going!  So that is the next project – get the heater installed – so that maybe at some point this winter we can take a “staycation” to the boat.

I also recognize that dealing with laundry would be far less enjoyable if I couldn’t just run home and throw it on there – but then hopefully, when we are living aboard, the volume of laundry will be far reduced!

Being at home now means we can get a couple of projects done there (paint the outside of the house) and on the boat (heater, dodger hopefully before the winter sets in!).   Maybe once a couple of those are done we can head back down for a week or two… we will see!