Days 3-4

Day 3

8/27-8/28/2016 - Redding, CA

These are the days of frustration! Imagine choosing what you would need to live for a year for all 4 seasons, different adventures, making repairs and mending, decorating (if you can call it that), and on, and on it goes. What dresses do I take? What shoes? Ask this for everything and you get the idea! I’ve managed to successfully pack our clothes so that they are already rolled and in their little bins that will go on our V-berth shelves. This was a major accomplishment for me! I had Tim’s opinion on my dress choices and all in all I think the hangers amount to about 8 inches which will fit easily into our hanging locker with room for Tim’s hanging stack.

I’ve made additional trips to different stores to purchase items for our land house and sea house. The bedrooms are all ready and all the additional items are bagged up to go or put into storage somewhere in the land house. Clothing and toiletries were conquered on Day 3.


Day 4 has been spent cleaning out the pantries and making space for those who will be using them in the future at the land house. Imagine reworking/organizing half your kitchen, then purchasing items to separate the spaces. The vitamin/supplements/drug shelf was conquered and unneeded items bagged and stored. The freezer and refrigerator needed a complete rework as well. It REALLY feels like moving! I was hoping that it wouldn’t feel this way!

The front garden was also brought up to ready to leave behind today. The young grape vines have all been tended and tamed, the catalpa tree pruned up so you can walk under it again, the weeds removed and the walkways blown clean. A few additional drip lines were installed and all is ready for maintenance mode once again.

My feelings and emotions have been in so many places. The frustration of making so many choices, the thoughts of leaving the land house and some of things I wanted to accomplish as a general love for my home undone, to making decisions about other items to take and looking into my memory as where they will be stored on the boat (for example my sewing machine). There remains my feelings of sadness over spending 8 years earning and clearing my teaching credential and not being in the classroom this year. There are feelings questioning if I am any good at teaching anyway. These feelings must be normal for teachers who do not make tenure or fail to have contracts renewed.

I envision myself doing an onboard classroom that merges all the science subjects together as Tim and I make our daily plans and live our daily life on the sea. A sort of vicarious voyage for others to take with us. My mind has been so overloaded with preparations and decisions that the onboard classroom idea is parked. There will be time for it very soon, once we have left and actually hit the sea! Onward ho!

Lynette