Moving Daze

First you sort it. Pile on the left to boat. Pile on the right to storage. Because I NEED that green bowl, that's why.

We’re aboard! We've been sleeping on the boat for about 10 days, but spending the daylight hours at the rig. After more than a week of hard, hard work, the RV has been cleaned and emptied and moved to a consignment lot.

You’d think I’d have some nostalgia for our home of the last four years, but I was just relieved to get it fixed up, cleaned, emptied, and moved. David did the fixing up and a lot of the cleaning, I did cleaning and lots of the trips to Goodwill and the boat, and we both sorted, tossed, agonized, and tossed some more. In between times we gasped in the humid heat of a Houston summer and wondered who on earth moves in June. Evidently, we do. Bad idea, but the year has just slipped away from us.

Moving from a 33’ RV to a 36’ sailboat is somewhat like forcing a size 14 body into a size 10 girdle. I was astonished at what we had accumulated in four years in such a small space – I swear, inanimate objects have sex in the cupboards and multiply like mice. 

We’re still not done. The overflow boxes have gone to the second storage unit to be sorted through yet again. The rule is supposed to be: if you can buy it again and it doesn’t have some sort of emotional attachment, out it goes. We have both fallen into the trap of “but it’s a perfectly good ___.” Hopefully all of the "perfectly good" contents of those boxes will head for Goodwill next week. We want to be rid of the second storage unit (the "garage" where David has worked on our cars and where we varnished the doors, etc.) as soon as possible.

Of the things that made it to the boat, some have had to be taken right back off again (my big green metal bowl was replaced by collapsible plastic bowls) and other things I really need (like my reading glasses!) are hiding. We have sorted through and organized and put into boxes and have mostly succeeded in making a home out of what has looked like an upturned wastebasket for days (see below). I only had to move 3 boxes to sit down at the nav station so I could compose this blog post. :)

After working 8 to 12 hours a day for almost a week, we’ve given our exhausted selves the weekend off and have started to enjoy being home at last. The marina's pool is lovely, the weather has been good most days (although yesterday it was brick-oven hot), and we watched the Friday night fireworks from the cockpit last night. Day before yesterday, I sat out next to the Kemah channel around 6:30 in the cool morning air and watched our feathered neighbors go about the business of catching (or, in the case of the gulls, stealing) their breakfasts. I even saw a dolphin in the channel for the first time ever!

Then you schlep it. Or get your awesome husband to schlep it.

Then you stack it all over the settees...

And the galley...

And the nav station...

Then you sort and label boxes to stow under the settees.

Then you DRIVE the 300 yards to the pool and do some serious floating. And that's how you move to a boat in June in Kemah.