So, the first blog post. What to write what to write thinks looking wistfully and drumming fingers on the table? I guess most people ask us why we ended up living on a boat and just for clarity, it's not the boat pictured above (yet) as this is the main subject of this blog.

We lived on a 57' widebeam canal boat for just over 3 years from 2012 to 2015 which served its purpose of giving us an affordable home since we both work for ourselves. The thought of being laughed out of the bank manager's office as we apply for a mortgage with no real steady income (the life of feast or famine as self employed/freelance) made us look for options which wouldn't need a huge millstone of debt, hence, pool our savings and buy a boat. It wasn't perfect, but it was affordable, we'd found a serviced mooring and reserved it so we could move in fairly quickly.

The Good Life - our first boat. Not perfect and proved a great learning experience on what we really wanted out of a living space, what worked, what didn't and some very VERY important lessons on the technical side of boats.

Our original plan was to spend a year or two on board while we find where we wanted to live long term, but as time went by we enjoyed living on the water more and more. Before we sold out boat in situ (with the benefit of a mooring is better - the new owner can move straight in and you as the vendor get the 'good will' benefit in the price - assuming the mooring owner agrees to the swap) we were looking for a good 18-20 months for a new barge and had trawled our regular internet sites for suitable vessels, went to holland for 2 weeks on a barge hunt and everywhere we went we sniffed out moorings and possible boats for sale. You get pretty good at it after a while.

Our usual internet haunts were:

Apollo Duck
Fikkers.nl
Multiships
Doeve Brokers

We spent hours and hours looking for the right boat and you only know what's right when you have lived on board for a length of time. A quick holiday is good but only when you have to fill up the water, empty the poop tank, chop wood, fill with diesel and all the other annoying (but necessary) jobs will you really know what you want. It's not for everyone, but we love it, enough to buy a much bigger floating home.

The barge we are going to buy in the very near future is a 23.1m sailing barge with a unique history, 7 tonne engine and in need of a full refit since she has been a charter for the last 17 years or so. This blog covers the trials, tribulations, design, techniques of the refit and (hopefully) our travels through European waters and maybe up to Scandinavia once we have her ship shape and Bristol fashion.

Here she is in all her glory...

All being well, I have set the blog up so that you can comment and get in touch. Once I have got my thoughts in order I will write again on specific topics, but feel free to suggest topics if there is something of interest.