Moving Day

Moving day is finally upon us, packers are coming tomorrow to move out what is left of our stuff in the log house. We have been blessed with some great weather, just hoping it hangs in there until the weekend. 

Mark managed to dive on the hull of the boat, after a year in the slip we had a huge build up of barnacles, three hulls took him almost three hours in the water to scrape. 

Today we made two truck and trailer loads to the dump and brought in our first truck load of stuff to the storage unit. The packers are packing things we won't need while living on the boat but there are things we will need like winter clothes and school books that I didn't want packed. When we opened up the unit I was not impressed. It had been used previously as a workshop and had makeshift shelves build against the walls...

An old work bench...

Mouse poop.

Odd that when I asked about mice getting in they assured me they couldn't, well there is proof in the ...poop.

And they wonder how mice could be getting in?

When I said I wasnt paying $100/month for somebody else's mess and a rodent ridden unit they managed to come up with a better one.

As we spend our last night in the log house I don't feel any real sadness about leaving, maybe a bit of dread about the work that the rest of the week holds with the final move out and how much work is still left to do on the boat, but I hope this is the right move, certainly one we have worked towards and dreamed about and it's with excitement and a bit of apprehension we look ahead to our first night in our new home tomorrow.

Every move we dance out of one home and into another and this one is no different. No matter how much we hated living here, it was our home for a year and a half and there are memories which will always carry with us.

Sinatra gives us our usual last night send off...

"So, set 'em up Joe, I got a little story you ought to know

We're drinkin', my friend, to the end of a brief episode

Make it one for my baby and one more for the road.

One More Week.

Time is ticking down and the stress is amping up. We now have only seven days left before we need to be out of house and so much is left to do both at the boat and at the house. We have been having pretty good weather so we have been working on getting the rest of the boat painted.

My arms were pretty sore after.

Trying to keep the kids entertains with "fishing", really just scooping a bunch of uber teenie fish out of the water with a butterfly net.

On top of selling as much of our stuff as we can and donating the rest we decided to give my dad our hot tub for his 50th birthday. This of course meant we needed to somehow deliver it to Victoria. Uhaul didn't make a trailer big enough to carry it, we didn't want to pay thousands of dollars for a delivery company we removed the storage box off of the toy hauler deck of our travel trailer and the hot tub fit like a glove. We island hopped from Whidbey to Vancouver Island to attend the family bible camp with my parents and brough the tub with us.

The lot next door to my parents is having a house built on it, we enlisted the help of the crew and their big machines to help move things out of the way, hand to have a bulldozer (or whatever that is) around.

Three guys and some PVC pipes and a 1000lb hot tub is relatively easy to move.

In it's new home.

Unfortunately while we were away we had left Barney at the house, he should have been fine alone for two days with extra food and water but when we returned we found him dead in his cage. It's sad and I miss my little buddy but it may have been a blessing in disguise, it was going to be a challenge to live with a loud bird on the boat, also I'm sure he would have flown away as soon as we left a hatch open. 

Our house is organized into piles, this is the boat pile, I was terrified to see if I could actually make all this fit on the boat but we have since managed to get all this in and still have plenty of room, boats are very deceiving on how much storage they actually have.

The Weber Q

Our first BBQ.

Our sail inventory. The date on the spinnaker is January 1969, ten years older than the actually boat but it seems in pretty decent condition.

A back up jib and some stay sails.

Of course on top of getting the house ready for the landlords inspection and the boat ready to live, we had to throw in an rv reno in there too. Ever since we bought the trailer a year ago there was a small soft spot on the floor.

The whole floor needed to be ripped up, the wet plywood torn up and replaced, new flooring out down and all the benches and table put back in.

My mom and dad were down this last weekend to help me get the house ready and work on the boat, the kids have been spending every waking moment with their neighbour friends, they are going to miss playing with them everyday.

Dad working on frankenstiening my bike trailer to be able to tag along the ot

Finn and Molly.

Our new mode of transportation. It's awesome! Thanks Dad. This will make my life easier. Even though we are in town on the boat Mark still needs the truck everyday for work, we are closer to things and I could walk it all but dragging three kids will small legs makes it more difficult. Problem solved. 

Taking a break at the Blue Fox Drive-in. Our kids and their freinds in the back of the truck watching How to Train Your Dragon 2. Good times.

Odd time to fix your roof rack, no?

Breaks over back to business. Cleaned out the garage, finished up the final touches on the rv floor and starting making the final trips to the boat with our stuff.

The last of our garbage pile, we have about three more trailer loads to take to the dump, it makes me sick to see how much stuff we waste, can't wait for the more minimalist lifestyle. Every time I buy something now I want to make sure in a few years I won't see it taking up space in the landfill.

So now we wait. We wait to hear from the packers and mover that the military hired to move us (supposedly) we gave our notice 23 days ago and with lay a week left we still have not been contacted by a company to ans move us out, getting a bit worried something got lost in the paperwork as it went through the proper channels and we may be stuck come July 1st and all our stuff still in the house.

The joys of moving.

Crunch Time.

Time is getting down until the packers come and we officially move onto the boat, 13 more days and so much to do. It doesn't help that we are going out of town next week so we need to get as much done now as we can.

Of course things can't go too smoothly, as a lovely side effect of living in the country we've been plagued with bugs and parasites, we've battled fleas and ticks and lice and now we are dealing with scabies, ick. I had never even heard of them before but it's not too hard to fix, rub some cream all over and clean all the clothes and bedding, easy.... Oh wait, it's only easy is you have a working washer and dryer. Thanks to this house having too long of a vent hose, every couple, of months our dryer overheats and blows a thermalcoupler. So it decides to do this three weeks before we move, not long enough a time for us to get the new part ordered and fixed but long enough to be a huge inconvenience.

So we brought every piece of material in our house to the laundromat over two days. We washed everybodies clothes and all the bedding and took the freshly cleaned stuff directly to the boat so, we have all that moved in, but while we are still living between the boat and the house we have one set of clothes and one set of pjs each, clothes get washed at night and hung by the fire (we are using up the last of our firewood) to dry for the next day and pjs washed in the day for that night. It's so much fun, really.

Meanwhile, at the boat... More decorating in the kids rooms, sticker time.

Back at the house... Our first attempt at trampolines, it was a failure. It would have worked but we do need a sailrite sewing machine. I had hoped my heavy duty, juki quilting machine would be able to handle sewing through the shelter rite trim we wanted to rim the netting with but after four bobbin snags and broken needles we gave up. Since a sailrite machine is not in my near future we are moving on to plan B, rather than using the shelter rite we are just going to directly lace the netting on to the boat, not as pretty and professional looking but serviceable.

Making it feel like home. New bird cage that fits and our one family photo.

Our popeye family and breaking in the new TV with Shrek.

Mermaid quarters.

Ash went a big sticker crazy, but why not? If you can't go crazy as a kid when can you?

Crews quarters.

Folding ironing board.

It's an over the door one we got from walmart, drilled some holes in the frame and screwed it to the bulkhead, fits like a glove.

And we have been making dozens of thrift shop runs and dump runs. Who knew a house could hold so much stuff?

Boat babe.

This weekends project was to get the lifelines installed. Of course I had hoped this would be a one day project, oh silly me. First, before we could get the bases on we had to empty out the amas, they were full of sails and tools and junk.

The ama may be clean, but the dock no longer is.

Putting the butyl tape on to every bolt on the base plates.

Drilling holes through the deck, always scary to me.

Premade backing plates to go underneath the deck to create added support for the bases.

Cockpit painted, some cushions down and our new weber Q in the corner.

Found this decal at the buck store, thought it fit.

So a weekend of work on lifelines and we have two stanchions standing, but not screwed in. Eight back plates on the deck but only four are completely done because we ran out of nuts and need longer screws for some.

Work may be slow going but things are getting done at least, the house is clearing out, the boat is filling up, lifelines are coming along, amas are cleaned and organized, anchor holder was installed, hopefully tomorrow we will get the kitchen sink draining directly overboard.

Thankfully the weather has been great!