So I was informed by WordPress that it had been 4 months since our last post. Life is busy as a sea gypsy! Where do I begin?? Well, it all started on that northern trip (you might have read something about that…) where we made the decision to fully commit to the cruising lifestyle – for the next few years at least (actually, we had thought long-term cruising would be the idea when we first started building Gonyonda, but after 3 kids, we weren’t sure if the idea would still work…).

After moving back to our Port Denison house in Feb 2015, it was time to move out again once we returned – really move out. It is an interesting feeling to declutter your life – especially when you are decluttering the lives of 5 people. So many memories! (what do I do with that amazing box creation Number 2 made in kindy??) In the end it came down to 3 categories: keep, give, bin. Happily?/reluctantly?/painstakingly? I packed our land lives into about 12 largish plastic storage containers, a filing cabinet and a few chests of drawers. The house needed to be emptied, cleaned, repaired and let, the shed needed…(don’t even go there…), a storage place had to be built (in the shed…somewhere…), a forwarding address was decided for the redirection of mail (‘C/O Indian Ocean’ might not work…), and a whole load of other jobs were somehow completed between working, homeschooling and parenting. Goodbyes were made, and loose ends were tidied up in the place we had called home for the last 12 years. The waterline gradually got lower on Gonyonda… And once we had finally moved aboard ready to journey south, the wind had its say for the next month: ’35kn southerlies Gonyonda- welcome to your new life!’ And we both thought ‘WTF have we done…’

Only for about a month though (post-move blues/life-changing decision come-down??) We had a wonderful Christmas period with our Dongara family and friends, recovered and prepared the boat on Boxing Day, and set sail south on the 27th December 2015. Only 3 months late – not bad!