New boat - new plans
It was part of our retirement plans to get a bigger boat so we could go on longer cruises. Our previous boat Mind Like Water was basically a single room floating caravan which was fine for the 2 week cruise that we could manage while working but less practical for longer cruises (i.e. 2-3 months) that we plan to do after retirement. Andrew retired from lecturing in August 2021 and Alison will retire from the GMB union in early March 2022. So… As we were doing this year's IWA lock wind in early August 2021 near Venetian Marina where we bought Mind Like Water, we thought we could go and have a look at what they had on sale - just to start gathering information about what is around of course… Anyway… a chap from Venetian came to look at Mind Like Water and we went to look at two boats. One was a bit too long at 60ft and also had a rather poor internal fitout done by the previous owner. But the other one was the right length (57ft), quite nice and reasonably priced. When Venetian then