Oct 5th 2017

This morning I sit here, while painting the walls of my house to cover the marks of 6 years of family life, I hear the kids playing in the garden and the next door neighbour mowing lawns, I feel a sense of sadness, mixed with an equal dose of fear and also excitement.

Today we may own a boat. Today our life may change entirely.

We have talked, planned, dreamed and longed for this change. We have decided to take on a challenge of a lifetime and sell everything to go and pursue adventure and family connection. We have chosen to try a life out of the ordinary and see how it suits us.

This in itself sounds fine. Yeah sure, we will just sell up and go and live on a boat. No worries right…? Well it started like that. The dream was distant but achievable, and it would take time to get there so I didn’t put too much thought into the nitty gritty of it all. Well the dream has hit fast forward in a major way….

We found a good boat, and we have done what checks we can from several thousand miles away and have offered on it. We have had a counter offer and some negotiation and then made our final, affordable offer, (if there is such a thing with a boat!!!) The owners have decided to sleep on our offer, and today is the day that we will find out their choice. If they decide to accept our offer, we will need to fly to Tahiti to have a sea trial and a survey done to make sure she is what she us advertised as.

To say it is an easy decision is not right, it is easy in the decision to want to spend the time wiht our gorgeous kids, and be together as a family to experience what this amazing world has to offer, but the giving up is harder than I thought it would be.

We live in a fantastic family friendly area. I have made a solid group of amazing friends in my community. The kids are at a wonderful school and pre school. We have a beautiful, sunny home with the most incredible views. We have 3 pets who we all adore. The kids have met lovely friends. All this has to be given up. And that is a hard feeling…

I have days of pure excitement, and others are filled with sadness and anxiety. The rollercoaster is real!! Things I am doing daily can sometimes have a sense of a ‘last time’, and yet we are far from being at ‘lasts’ yet.

I read stories from people who have done this. We make spreadsheets of costs, to do lists, gear needed and upgrades wanted. We constantly look at boats and forums with all kinds of topics, ranging from destinations, boat reviews, equipment and weather, to blogs of other families that have chosen this adventure. I google ‘storms in boats’ and freak myself out, and then watch YouTube channels of people who are living this dream and reassure myself on what we have chosen!

I know what we are choosing to do with our family will have an incredible effect on the kids, and us too, and I am sure in a positive way. What could be a better choice than to be with these kids the two of us chose to have, to show them the world beyond Northcote, Auckland, New Zealand. To show them we are all part of such a bigger picture. And just to be with them before they are too grown and possibly don’t want to be with us!

And so in the meantime, I wait. I paint, and I wait. I wait for the banker to call me back to confirm all the monetary side of things. I wait for filler to dry in the holes in the walls our kids have made during their play. I wait for my anxiety to subside for now. I wait for the excitement to return.

And most of all, I wait for the call from the broker to tell me if my life has changed entirely….