First blog, first post!

So, on the long 'to do' list for our grand plan of living on a boat and sailing round the world and is 'start a blog'. As with most boat plans, the timelines flex and here we are 4 years after we first became liveaboards crossing that item off the list!

Why would we want to start a blog?

With all that boat work to do, two children to look after and full-time jobs  we can understand why you might be asking.

We have a few reasons...

• Keeping in touch:

We want to keep friends, family and acquaintances up to date on our adventure. We're not always the best at keeping in touch so we thought a blog would be a good way to keep anyone who is interested, updated on our progress.

• A memento:

We find it difficult to remember what we had for breakfast yesterday, let alone where we went on holiday last year. We want to be able to look back on our adventures and remember the good and the bad times with clarity. As our children have only ever known boat life and will still be quite small when we set sail we also hope that this will be a good memento for them.

• Helpful guide for us and others:

With an old boat and a tight budget we do a lot of the work ourselves. We hope to use this blog to give an overview of the projects we carry out so that we have a good record of how we accomplished projects and so others might be able to learn from the trials and errors we have made.

We'll use this space, not only to talk about the DIY work but all the things you learn along the way like what to look for when buying a boat, places to visit, insurance, surveys etc.

We've noticed so far that a lot of the blogs are USA based or from people already somewhere tropical. We have at least another 4 years of day-to-day grind whilst living on a boat in the UK, so the challenges for us are always a bit different to those we have read about. Of course spying on the lives of those sailing clear blue seas and enjoying the sun is a great escape when your diesel heater has packed up, the marina electric has tripped and you wake up for work at 6am and can see your own breath, but it would be great to see more from those dealing with everyday liveaboard life in wetter, colder climates. We read a great blog about a couple in Canada dealing with a freezing moorings each year and having to shrink wrap their boat all winter... they had some great advice on insulation and storing items in cold boats and it made us feel like our situation wasn't half so bad!