Up Till Now I wasn't Sure Who Had the Harder Job

As you may know, we sold our Taylorwood Place house after 15 years and are moving to the one we bought a few years ago on Mathers Avenue. While the house is an up in some ways – nicer yard, closer to the school, it is quite a bit smaller and it needs work. Having been a rental for 10 years or more shows on the state both the house and the yard. There is a lot of work to do when we move in this fall starting with the renovation of a few bathrooms.

First things first, we need to move out of the Taylorwood house. We’ve been planning the move for six months or so, starting with the showings – that led to some purging of some junk. The reality is that you don’t start to get an appreciation of all the junk you accumulate over 15 years until you move. We have every nook and cranny of the 4,460 square foot house filled to capacity. In addition, we have a lot of stuff in the back-yard and also in our double detached garage with workshop.

The people who rent our other house are looking to buy a house and they’ve been having a bit of a time finding a place so we agreed that they would stay at the house (except the Garage where we would put my cars, the motorcycles and tools) and we would load the rest of our stuff into PODS and store it until our return in September. This seemed to work for both of us.

We then came upon Ross and I leaving on June 23^rd so we could get the boat commissioned and sail to Athens to meet up with Marina and Jessie her competing in the girls U15 Provincial Soccer Tournament.

The West Vancouver Spuraways -- BC Provincial B-Cup Soccer Champions for 2012/2013

Ross and I were working on the house right up until we left, we were carrying lots of boat parts and we made our way to Cleopatra. We braved the heat and hot sun. We sweated and cut ourselves pulling cables and wiring, hooking up alternators and battery chargers.

Reaching along to Messalongia

Then when the boat was in the water we kept working on it, fixing things here and there. Basically we were starting to get sick of working on Tara. We kept going through Lefkas to Megasini, then back to Lefkas, visiting Port Police and the Tax office a couple of times, plus going to the bank again and again.

Wing-on-wing downwind for miles

Now we’re sailing to Messalongia, I realize we got the better end of this deal. While it has been a bit of a grunt to get the boat running, we’ve been here in Greece on the water the last couple of days and, in particular today, has been amazing. We woke up in Vathy after our midnight anchor episode and had a bacon and egg breakfast.

We then powered out into the harbour in preparation for our 40 mile trip. Of the 40 miles we have powered only about 5 miles, the rest has been a beam-to-broad reach, with an hour or so of running wing-on-wing in about 12 knots of breeze. The only thing that would have been better would have been to use the spinnaker, but with just two of us on board, we decided that might be a bad idea.

As we sip a beer watching the sun set over the marina in Mesalongia, it occurred to us that life wasn't so bad.

So in summary, Ross and I got the better deal. We’ll have to make it up to Marina, Jessie, Chelsea, and of course, Tina, somehow when we return to Vancouver.