The first break from our liveaboard lifestyle

Home sweet home - Maryport Marina.

We’ve just returned from our first stay ashore since we moved onto our boat at the start of November last year.

And the first night sleeping in a bed on solid ground was very strange.

I hadn’t realised I had become quite so used to the rocking motion on board, but apparently I have. So much so that I was more aware that the rooms we were staying in were still than I usually am that the boat is rocking. Often the only way I can tell we’re rolling from side to side is when I notice the curtains swinging backwards and forwards.

Ravensdale - our liveaboard home

The motion is, of course, very easily noticeable when the wind is blowing a gale or the sea swell is particularly high in which case rocking would be an understatement for the motion we experience onboard.

We visited Wales and the south of England to visit family and, although it was lovely to see everyone again and there was a certain novelty to having so much room to move around in the holiday cottages we had booked, part of me missed Ravensdale.

One thing that was very different from previous holidays is that I was very aware that I couldn’t buy anything much to take home.

Any memento had to be tiny and preferably have a use and look attractive to justify its place in our liveaboard home.

Having got rid of most of our possessions and battled to find homes for those considered absolutely necessary, we really couldn’t justify buying anything that didn’t meet these criteria.

Our new boat signs

I’m not quite sure whether these signs that we bought to hang in the window to greet visitors class as attractive or useful, but we both liked them so they came home with us :-)

Three other purchases definitely fall into the useful category – a life raft, an outboard motor for our tender and three tins of antifoul paint, although they hardly class as mementos of our holiday.

We also bought a tiny wok that will be a much better fit on our little gas stove than the one we had and a set of ultra-slim digital kitchen scales to enable us to get rid of the larger ones we brought from our last home.

On our return journey, we were looking forward to getting home. However, when we opened Ravensdale’s door, we were less keen to be back.

Before we left, we had made sure there was plenty of electricity to cover our break and we had asked the marina staff to keep an eye on the meter and to feed it if necessary as we didn’t want our fridge, small freezer, dehumidifier and heating to go off while we were away.

Typically, the power went off the day we left. It turns out that a breaker went and blew the fuse on the pontoon.

Our freezer sits on a cupboard above the galley

We were greeted by a freezer full of rotten food and the boat was filled with the smell of meat that had been at room temperature for a fortnight.

It was even worse when we opened the freezer and we were subjected to the full strength of the disgusting stench it produced.

We emptied it, threw away the food and attempted to clean it, but nothing would get rid of the disgusting smell so it's currently airing on our aft deck and we're waiting for a special freezer deoderiser to arrive tomorrow.

If it doesn’t work the freezer is going to have to go to the tip, which would be very sad given that it is only about three months since we bought it.

Other than that, we're happy to be back on board.

Looking on the bright side - at least we saved the money we would have spent on two weeks electricity, which will go some way towards restocking the freezer (if we ever get rid of the smell) or help with the cost of a new freezer (if necessary)...