Obstacle courses for squirrels

April 2023

I’m writing this from the cockpit of our boat. OUR BOAT! OUR boat! We actually own a boat and live on it! In Greece!  Crazy!  Talk about a pinch yourself moment. 

If you’d have told me 12 months ago that we’d have sold our house and all our worldly belongings and be living on a sailboat on the other side of the world I would have laughed in your face.  Scoffed even.  Asked you what you were drinking and told you to have another one!  We would have filled our glasses, cheersed each other and laughed together. Me, living on a sailboat, sailing, with the kids – ha! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ah aha ha hah ha ahhh…. You get the idea.

We had a great life – loved our house, the kids were happy at school, I loved my job & was good at it, we had a dog and got to walk her at the beach everyday… why would we give all that up?! No thank you, not for me, I’ll pass.  Who wants to live on a boat anyway?!  God, not me.  It sounds very hippie and nomadic.  And I’m terrified of sharks.  I find sand annoying.  And I’ve never sailed in my life!  Nor have I wanted to.  Besides, I don’t even like the ocean.

So how on earth, a year later, do I find myself sitting in the cockpit of our boat, in Greece, writing this?!  How indeed. 

Stewart is to blame (of course!) for pitching the crazy idea in the first place.  He has sailed before and has always wanted to own a boat.  I didn’t quite realise that he meant the type of boat I find myself on now though, I always pictured more of a fishing type boat but couldn’t fathom why on earth he would want one as he doesn’t even fish! Doesn’t catch it, rarely eats it and usually baulks when I dare serve it up for dinner.  I never really paid too much attention when he waffled on about boats in the past as it wasn’t realistically on the cards, more of a pipe dream that he could hold on to.  So whenever it came up I would just nod and smile and let him fantasize. I am NOT a boat person so in my mind that was the end of the idea.  He could live out his boat fantasies when I was dead and gone. He could then buy his island (another pipe dream) and have whatever boat he pleased! 
Where did Stewart get the idea from though?  I mean, it’s a fair leap from wanting to ‘own a boat’ to selling up everything and moving your family onto a yacht to go cruising for a few years. 

You Tube is the culprit.  While watching mindless videos with Hudson one day (I believe it was obstacle courses for squirrels, of all things!) he randomly came across a video posted by Sailing Zatara (American family that have been cruising for about 10 years).  He quite fancied the look of the cruising lifestyle and so pitched it to me – my reply was a mixture of scoffs and snorts, some very highly raised eyebrows and a firm ‘no thank you!’ 
I clearly remember telling friends of ours about his crazy idea when we met them for drinks the next day and we all had a good laugh about it.  Ohh Stewart – such funny ideas you have, ha de haa, snort, giggle giggle, scoff, snort, imagine living on a boat! ahhh, bless him.
Anyhoo, 2 weeks later we saw those same friends again and they jokingly asked how our plans were going to live on a boat.  They laughed when I told them we were going ahead with it and when they realised we were serious, the look of sheer disbelief on their faces was priceless.

So, what changed my mind?  Two weeks is a pretty swift turnaround for a fairly life changing decision.  A decision that would mean selling our home that we loved, and thought would be our forever home.  Selling, donating, gifting or storing all our worldly belongings, pulling the children out of school and away from their friends and extra-curricular activities, leaving behind our careers, family and friends and the hardest part of all – the decision to rehome our beautiful dog Maggie rather than bring her with us.
It certainly wasn’t a decision made lightly but in the end, I just thought ‘why not?’
Sure, we were happy with life as it was – the kids enjoyed school and had a good group of friends, so did we.  We loved our house, our neighbours and the community we lived in, I loved my job and was doing pretty well at it…BUT while the kids were in school, life was going to be pretty much same same for the next 10 years, so why not change it up a bit?  The kids were growing up fast and it’d be a great way to sort of slow time down a bit, to spend more time with them and take them on an adventure.  As a family, apart from walking the dog together on the beach, we didn’t really have a ‘thing’ that we all did together.  No family hobby like hiking or fishing, skiing or stamp collecting, no regular holidays… we did do the occasional bike ride together and there were a few camping trips when the kids were younger, although we never stayed for more than 1 night!  (It’s fair to say our camping efforts were a bit of a disaster and very short lived).
Embarking on this adventure meant that perhaps we could make up for it and just condense it all together – travel, sport, schooling, culture, history, LIFE! 
So why not?! Let’s do it, let’s sell everything, fly to the other side of the world, buy a boat and sail around Europe, living on the ocean, on top of each other, 24/7 for about 3 years, woohoo, why not, let’s do it!  What’s the worst that could happen??