Yacht Pipit

      

Moving out and moving aboard, April & May 2010


A kitchen window view I will miss...


Leaving meal, Chipping Sodbury.


Delivery of new dinghy.


The end of years of paperwork...


Nearly 45 years of 'stuff'...


...fitted into 15 square feet...


This is how it will be as liveaboards - counting the pennies. Well actually £350 of 'loose' change...


A return visit to Topsham Quay - the venue for our first lunch together...



Bye bye Freelander...

27th April - well what a hectic 3 weeks! Since Easter, and the end of our fulltime work, we have cleared one house, prepared another for letting, squeezed forty something years of 'stuff' into just 15 square feet of storage and shut down our land based lives. This has been a logistical and organisational challenge, with the two houses 200 miles apart and Pipit in between, but fortunately we are both logical and organised by nature so have been able to enjoy the process along the way.

Last Wednesday was a significant day for Andy, as he relinquished Walnut Cottage, a lovely place to have called 'home' for the last 16 months, and also sold his car, leaving him carless for the first time since age 16 3/4! Another significant day yesterday as Ann handed over the keys of her house to the letting agency, ready for the tenant to move in on Friday. So much planning, hard work and attention to detail has been put in to renovating the cottage, it's a shame to hand it over to a stranger, but we leave it with a feeling of satisfaction of what we have achieved working together.

And so today is the most significant day of all, the day we finally moved aboard Pipit as liveaboards and can now call her 'home'. We still have a list of jobs to do, but hopefully we will be on our way in a week or so.







Day one as liveaboards - this luxury may not continue...




And so to work - where will all this stuff go?



Ouch...

Things are not going well - the relatively simple task of mounting the liferaft on the coachroof required the removal of the traveller. However, 7 years of stainless steel bolts into alloy extrusion is not a good combination, and so I had to use a hacksaw to destroy the traveller end stops in order to get the traveller off. We are now awaiting new ones from Sweden...

And then the liferaft cradle wouldn't sit flat on the coachroof, requiring some cunning alterations to its mounting brackets. And along the way we had a water leak down below because we couldn't re-seal some bolt holes because we couldn't get the traveller off... And we are still waiting for another part for the liferaft mounting...













At least I'm making something and not destroying it...


The first laundry run...


6th May - Still waiting for parts, and this morning the brand new plotter developed a fault, and has been removed for investigation. And it's raining...

Although we're itching to get going, frustratingly I think we'll be in Plymouth for some time yet...