Life aboard begins

I don't really eat sausages, I'm a vegetarian of 20 odd years. But I live with one, in the form of a middle-sized dachshund (her mum was standard, her dad a miniature, apparently a deeply illegal form of breeding according to the anxious woman I met in the garden centre last week) aged 13 and a half. She has taken to life on the boat with her usual nonchalance. As long as there is food available and a sunny spot to sleep in, this gal's A.O.K. Which says a lot more for her than it does for her two owners who veer from exhilaration to complete what-the-hell-have-we-done? anxiety.

The boat herself is 90 years old and not without a few signs of ageing. She's a beautiful 'gentleman's cruising yacht' (not sure where I fit in this description, but am happy to don a moustache and deck shoes if needs be); all mahogany and brass portholes. But there are leaks and holes and sinister problems with rotting wood. We leapt into buying her like a pair of overzealous lemmings. The previous owner advertised her on Gumtree for the princely sum of all our savings. R came home clutching the advert. 'We finally get a chance to live our dreams, we'll move onto a boat!' he exclaimed delightedly to his slightly more dubious and home-comfort-orientated wife. There had been a lot of talk about going off-grid, living more simply. Perhaps we'd buy a plot of land, build a house? Perhaps we'd buy a van and drive across Europe? Perhaps we'd just talk about it all until we had haemorrhoids and a mortgage and grandchildren with dreams?

In a fit of stupidity it's too complex to go into, we bought the boat and then got the survey. The surveyor came crashing in with a scythe to our Field of Dreams. Wake up kids! Smell the coffee! This boat's got more problems than a pair of hapless individuals with no prior boat knowledge or experience can cope with. He valued her at a third of what we'd paid and poked a couple of holes into her side with a hammer for good measure. But dreamers are good at dreaming, it's what we do best. So R and I moved onto our floating home armed with the goodwill of our marina community and began life aboard.

So far...a week into our adventure we discovered a week's worth of, ahem, urine festering under the floorboards of our bed'room' (really just a bed in the prow of the boat, no room to speak of). It turned out the pump wasn't working on our toilet or 'head' as they're called aboard (see, I'm learning all the time!). There had been one hell of a smell in the bedroom and my detective nose was hard at work from Day 1. So it was good to discover the root of the problem and get to work on fixing it. The recent rain revealed a number of sneaky leaks. Apparently freshwater is a wooden boat's worst enemy so we'll be up on deck varnishing this weekend.

But our new life has turned up a whole host of wonderful things, not least a boating community eager to advise and help us. Turns out our little home is quite the historical wonder and everyone wants to lend a hand restoring her to her former glory. One of our (slightly crazy) new neighbours was so keen to get stuck in at the weekend he insisted we start the engines. They hadn't been run for nearly 3 years but started first time, coughing out thick black diesel smoke and making enough noise to drown out all but the keenest of conversationalists. Along with the noise came the most dramatic of vibrations, sending the last of our few possessions skittering and smashing across the floor. Gone are the engagement present champagne flutes - smash! Gone is the new mobile phone just 2 days old to a watery death in the bilge tanks. We were left with a scene of havoc and destruction and the wise words from our (really pretty crazy) new neighbour, 'glasses are no good on boats'. We're learning all the time.

In preparation for our life aboard, we had to dramatically down-size our possessions, getting rid of pretty much everything bar 5 large boxes of books ('not the books, don't make me get rid of the books!') which are quietly gathering dust and mouse-droppings in my mother-in-law's loft. How liberating this exercise was! And crazily difficult...as the charity pile grew and the take-to-the-boat pile shrunk, I found myself yearning to hold on to that old handbag, cardigan, tealight holder etc. etc. We put our possessions outside the house and watched as they were feverishly gathered up by passers-by. New homes for our old stuff.

As we began this adventure, I'd turn again and again to Henry David Thoreau's quote:

'Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined. As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe become simpler.'

It helps me to remember why we made this choice to turn our backs on a mortgage or sinfully expensive rent, slavishly working 9-5 to make ends meet, paying council tax and water rates and heinous electricity bills....yes, problems and all, life is a lot simpler now.