Last night I realized how daily things will change, once we’re on the boat. And I don’t mean the fact that the ‘house’ is not attached to a proper foundation, or that the ‘garden’ looks completely different, every morning. And that we can avoid noisy neighbours by simply cruising away.
No, it’s more about daily routine. Yesterday, while getting my Christmas stuff out of storage, I had to use a stool, in order to reach it. The ceilings in my house are 2.50 metres high, and so is most of my storage space. And what is usually on the top shelf? Correct, the things you only need once in a while. In this case the Christmas decorations. In the boat I should be able to reach virtually everything while standing with both feet on the ground.
Since all the Christmas stuff was in my bedroom, I had to take it downstairs. Four times up the stairs (14 steps) and four times down the stairs (14 steps again). That’s another thing boats don’t have: stairs. Oh, I know, locks will make up for that. But I don’t have to go up and down the stairs 20,000 times a day, every day.
And another thing: will we still manage to drive a car, after eight months of cruising? It’s a small step for me (from, in my younger days, 75,000 kilometres a year in a left hand driven car to next to zero in a car with the steering wheel on the wrong side), but it will be a huge step for Lawrance. At the moment he easily manages 130,000 kilometres a year.