Life on board

Yesterday we took a taxi to Rakiraki, a busy market town 20 minutes from Volivoli resort, where we are anchored at the moment. It was Saturday morning and everyone was in town to do their shopping - great fun browsing the market stalls amid the almost entirely Indian-Fijian crowds. We were incredibly excited to find mangos, but disappointed to discover after we'd bought them that they won't ripen and are only fit for making chutney.

Rakiraki market, Viti Levu, Fiji

Our taxi driver asked where we were from and we explained we'd sailed over 17,000km at a maximum speed of 15km/hr. It made me stop and think: approaching nine months of living aboard, how have we adapted to our floating home? It is, after all, like a floating caravan, albeit a luxurious one with our own design touches, such as the reading lights in the
cockpit. Space is limited and many items are stowed away in cubby holes, corners and underneath the sole (floor). Charles (high tech) has an app which tells him where spares are stored; I have (low tech) The Book, which
informs me that we only have one more jar of peanut butter, beneath my bedside sole, but are unlikely to run out of lentils, hidden away in the forward cabin.

Some day to day routines are much like those at home. Cleaning has to be done and stainless steel always needs polishing. There's no corner shop or Waitrose and no restaurants to deliver meals. We bake bread and make yogurt - our latest batch has the seeds scraped from a Tongan vanilla pod, which I hope will taste delicious for breakfast tomorrow. No gym or personal trainer, but we do stretches most mornings, inspired by Dinah's yoga. Laundry needs to be done - what a luxury to have a washing machine on board, and clothes dry unbelievably quickly in the sun and breeze, pegged out on the rail. There's always DIY, charging the batteries, fixing things, mending. The difference is, there's nobody else to do it for us. Other differences: no shoes and no news - I don't miss either of those. Our commute is a dinghy ride ashore, almost always resulting in a wet bottom, but so much more pleasant than the Tube. And I think there's a difference in mentality, too, which is perhaps most important. There's no room or time for grumpiness. We are in this together and whatever happens, it's our voyage, our adventure. Nine months in, that feels great.