20th August 2022
11 pm 20.08.22 was when we arrived safely one mile from Port Navy Services at the 1st Bar we found open. The journey was 22 hours long, Garry ended up doing most of the driving and I did the navigating later when darkness fell so we did not crash into roundabouts.
We had been given instructions that keys would be with boat, but no keys to be found. It was dark in the boat yard and having never having owned a boat before we had no idea how to break into one.
So we (Stuart, Garry, George and I) slept in the van till daylight, 3 people and a Gorilla in a small van is not recommended. Project break into your own boat started early next day, which turned out to be much easier than we thought. We had to wait until the office opened to announce our arrival, now armed with a gate key Stuart’s van could be moved around to boat side.
Garry and Stuart started to unload the van, now you have to understand Garry put small items onto floor of van for Stuart to load into kitchen cupboards , which distracted him while Garry shoe horned our belongings into back and other areas in van. Stuart was unaware of how much stuff we had loaded into his van until seeing them pile up on boat deck. On the journey over Stuart had been concerned about two things, how slow his van was moving and the air in rear nearside Tyre, which we had assured him it was just the uneven weight distribution.
My first job was to get organised and clean inside the boat and replace the previous owners unwanted crap with our crap. We were in possession of duplicate ‘cherished artifacts’ and one boat! As it happens in front of our boat was a very large shipping container converted into a skip, this turned out to be pure entertainment all day long.
It would seem what is one persons discarded stuff is gold to others. Day after day I would watch people arrive in cars, on bikes and mopeds. Some dropped off stuff, other came for a look at stuff , some just waded in to find stuff, it was a very busy skip, that rarely needed emptying.
Life living on a boat began on the hard in the middle of a dry dock marina with other nice boating people. Little did we know what lay ahead and what also lived at the marina.