Now We Own a Boat!

We had headed off back up to Scotland to spend sometime with family and give us a break from plastic food and the inside of a hotel room. Home cooked meals taste so much better than the pub equivalent and there's nothing like a Scottish breakfast, sets you up for the day! Puts a little weight on you too!

It probably was a little pre-mature but Rachael did a little shopping for bits and pieces for the boat, it was like setting up house. She picked up cutlery, crockery, pots, pans and cooking utensils as well, to name just a few items.

It felt like quite a wait for the marine surveyor's report to get to us but it did turn up Saturday evening. We forwarded a summary to the boat broker with instructions to pass the information on to the owner, the broker also rang me about the boat on Saturday and said he would meet us at the boat yard on Monday. We did the 3.5 hour drive down to Stoke on Monday and straight to the boat yard to find only the receptionist working on Mondays...welcome to boating! Back on Tuesday to the boat yard once again to spell out our requirements only to find the email had yet to be read...very slow progress.

While the broker was carrying out our instructions from the surveyor's report we went off for a walk around the lake nearby to find a few ducks sunning themselves with their chicks. Wednesday we were back with the broker and then off to the Anderton Boat Lift. It was built by Edwin Clark in 1875 to lift cargo boats the 50 feet from the River Weaver up to the Trent and Mersey Canal. If you would like to read more, try here. The visit to Anderton was two fold since we are still looking for a marina to leave the boat while we are back in Australia for the summer. There was a marina near here that we were interested in.

Today (Wednesday) was a big day! We received an early morning phone call to let us know that the previous owners of Serafina had agreed to a reduced price in exchange for the various items that needed attention on the boat. We now own a 57' narrow boat. The broker now wanted to see the colour of our money, the boat is ours! We went over to the brokerage once again to ensure we were explicit with our requirements for OUR boat. We spent the rest of the day visiting another marina and had lunch with some friends on their boat over near Rugby. It turned out to be a long but exciting day, pouring rain all day, non-stop.

We expect to be living on the boat by this weekend, whether on the water or on dry land but that's a post for another day soon.