We’d made the long journey down the country from Yorkshire to the south coast the evening before, full of anticipation and disbelief of the day ahead. It was Thursday, 24th April when we awoke early in our AirBnB, quickly getting ready and then driving the short distance from our accommodation in Weymouth, across the causeway which connects the Isle of Portland to mainland of England, to Portland Marina. A crisp blue sky created a mirror of blue in the vast harbour waters.
Throughout the morning we waited, slightly impatiently, for the broker to arrive. It was nearly 1 pm by the time he placed the keys in my hand, and we walked out of his office in a daydream. Papers and keys clutched tightly, neither of us daring to speak in case we slammed down to earth, and cracked what currently appeared to be reality.
After speaking to the marina office, and officially declaring Lanita as ours, we walked, almost surreally, through the marina gates.
Minutes later, we stood beside her, taking a moment to pause and admire what was now ours. Then we climbed aboard, unlocked the door and made our way down the companionway. There we stood, both in a state of disbelief, looking around in wonder. We’d finally done it. Two years of on and off searching, many hours and days of driving up and down the country, and now we stood there, victorious, trying to take everything in. Once again, we were officially boat owners!
We had a four-day weekend ahead of us, by the end of which we hoped to create a liveable space to move onto. So throughout the afternoon we wasted no time setting to work cleaning her up, methodically removing the two-year layer of dust that had built up.
While trying to vacuum we tripped a breaker, losing all power to plug sockets on board. After having found the switchboard nestled away inside the cockpit locker, and switched the power back on, we spent a good couple of hours tracing wires around the boat, through cupboards and under floorboards. Inspecting the battery charger and inverter, and plugging a tester plug into different sockets, we tried to understand what made the system trip, and why we had a failure light showing up on the plug… With so much to explore and understand, it was hard not to get lost in a mission of discovery, and, after finding a way to vacuum, we had to drag our focus back to the cleaning task in hand.
The weekend was a flurry of activity. After cleaning and sorting through every cupboard (boat owners tend to leave an array of items on board for the next owner), we’d taken all the cushions on deck to try to beat the dust out of them. The weekend was a brilliantly blue one, and as we worked we occasionally glanced across at a neighbour who lazed in the dinghy tied to the back of her motorboat, drink in hand, listening to music that drifted across the water to our ears.
As I immersed myself in a deep clean of the galley, I pictured a scene of the wife in The Good Life TV series, black with dirt as she cleaned an old Aga oven her husband had brought home, and felt a kinship with the character. We were, I felt, beginning our very own chapter of ‘the good life’.
We scrubbed walls, ceilings, lockers, and every surface we could find over the four days, but also took time to begin working through some key issues for sailing – taking sails to the sail maker for inspection; calling riggers for quotes; and inspecting the electronics system. This wasn’t just a home after all, but was also intended to be our main means of exploration.
Saturday was our first night sleeping on board and after yet another long day, we settled down at the table in the saloon for our first warm meal on Lanita. Hands cupped bowls of soup, and I welcomed the transfer of heat into my palms, the meal before us signifying a huge step towards a more homely atmosphere.
Having rolled out camping mats and sleeping bags in the aft cabin, we crawled into bed, ready for a snug night’s sleep in our new home. Miki had arranged fairy lights along a shelf beside the bed, creating an invitingly warm, yellow, glow in the cabin. The cosiness was unfortunately short-lived as the nights still held the coolness of early spring, and the minimal layers we had weren’t enough to keep me warm.
Despite the cold, and mostly sleepless night, we rose happily on Sunday morning. Tired but sparkling eyes betrayed our delight. Though the work had only just begun and our bodies already felt the sharp adjustment from the last few months we’d spent in the comfort of a house, our minds were alight with the prospects ahead and the slowly settling realisation that our dream was, day by day, coming closer to being our reality.
