Getting Ready

Preparation has been on going ever since.  We are letting the house fully furnished from April 5th so that all needs sorting and tidying.  After sorting out letting agents and an EPC we were once again very lucky that a friend of Margaret's asked to rent it instead.  We still have to sort it and put all our stuff in the loft, office or garage but we don't have to worry too much about the garden or the houseplants.  Our house insurance had to be converted to a landlords policy, but then they wouldn't insure the contents, and when we did get them insured elsewhere they were not covered away from the house.  It turned out to be quite difficult to get things like the bikes, laptop and camera etc insured as contents of the boat.  Most boat policies expect the contents to be insured as part of the house contents.  Still that's done now and after signing the contract last Monday we transfered the money on Thursday 11th and we now own a boat.

Not much needs needs doing to her, we may take out a couple of built in units in the lounge to make more room for a sofa bed that we are going to buy and have bought a drop leaf table.  Sammy Jo has a permanent double in a cabin and 2 single in the rear that convert to a "double" but not a very big one hence the sofa bed.  We had to cancel the sofa that J bid for on ebay, after carefully making sure that we could get it in the car, and with only 2 hours to go J realised that it would not go through the door of the boat...well it is rather 'narrow'.  We are now looking at flat pack futon types.  We have retrieved all our old boat bits that were in store at Tangmere and are adding to them as required.  Next we have to get everything up to the boat which is currently moored at Great Haywood Marina on the Trent & Mersey canal.  We are going to go up on Tuesday 16th for 2 days, so that M doesn't miss her singing on Monday and J his art on Thursday eve.  We shall leave Charlie behind and take the trailer and a roof box and hope that with the trip we make when we leave Kent it will be enough, else we may have to do another round trip.