Moving boat is like moving house! Lots of packing, lots of cleaning up, the mixed emotions of closing a chapter and beginning a new one. And as with a house move, there is also a change of address!

It is another long post, so grab yourself a cuppa and enjoy the read!

Website Name Change

With a new boat, comes a new website address. You won’t have to do anything with your membership to our site. Our followers of sv-takeiteasy.com will be redirected seamlessly to http://www.sv-anui.com  For those who don’t know, the prefix SV stands for Sailing Vessel.

Yes, we are keeping the name Anui, which means “Big Canoe” in Polynesian. It is short, has a nice ring to it and suits the boat. It is a new beginning for us and it did not feel right to transfer the name Take It Easy, even though we liked it a lot.

We have a new watermark on our images too and a new site profile photo of course. It has been fun to make the changes ahead of time… hoping dearly all would go like clock work! Here is a close up of our watermark: the same stylised albatross we had before, but with our new site name.

Moving Home

Because we live aboard, moving boat is moving house for us. It is not only hard yakka, but also tinged with sadness. Once Anui was officially ours, we brought our two cats together at The Boatworks marina and moved our gear from one boat to the other – it was easier than packing our belongings in boxes! Only one aspect to be careful about: dropping anything in the drink on the walk over!

It was odd to see our two blueys together… one is a wee bit longer than the other – over a third in fact! We felt ecstatic at seeing them next to each other, if a little sad to soon be saying goodbye to Take It Easy. She has been such a good boat for us, but now it is time to look ahead at the amazing next phase of our sea wanderers’ life.

The not so fun part of the transition has been the removal of all our personal effects from Take It Easy to Anui, the clean up of TIE, and the massive job of sorting out the crockery, tools and spares left on Anui by the previous owners. We had to ensure we did not double up on things and put the gear where we wanted it. We kept going back and forth between the two boats taking stuff off, bringing bits back. There were messes on both boats for a few days!

Big mess in Anui’s cockpit

And the saloon isn’t much better!

To start with we left Bengie on Take It Easy to not upset her too much, but she was very good. Notice her sleeping on the table pretending it is not really happening!

Cockpit mess on TIE

Saloon mayhem on TIE – Bengie is sleeping through it!

She has settled in on Anui really easily. Lots of happy little meowing, sticky beaking everywhere and enjoying new spots to snooze in. She is such an adaptable cat!

Getting ready for Cyclone Owen

The move is all happening in a rush, because we took possession of Anui on Thursday 13 December, moved out of Take It Easy and got settled on Anui over the following four days, to have both boats secure before the arrival of cyclone Owen which is making its way down the Queensland coast and reaching us on Tuesday!

I was supposed to leave for France bright and early on Monday 17 December. But between the riots happening in France, the cyclone and the work involved in moving home, it all got too scary and unmanageable. So I took the hard decision to defer my voyage to see my Dad and sister till February. I was sad to have to do this, but relieved also.

We are staying put at The Boatworks on Anui, to sit out the remants of the cyclone. We could not face having to manoeuvre her in wild, wet weather and anchor out in the mangroves! The marina is the safest spot for us.

So what happens now!

We have now brought Take It Easy to the Gold Coast City Marina just next door to The Boatworks. so she is safe and easily accessible for viewing by potential buyers. There she will be till early January unless she is sold before that. We have advertised her here on our blog, on Yachthub, and on the Facebook group Women Who Sail Australia. We are getting some promising enquiries with a few appointments lined up. If she has not gone by 10 January, we will hand over her sale to a broker so we can enjoy sailing Anui without worry.

We are on Anui at the marina till Thursday 20 December. This will allow us to attend to a few of the items that need to be fixed on her and schedule some of the work for later. Once the weather has calmed down we will nervously get back into Moreton Bay and start to learn how to handle our new boat. We won’t be going very far as we need to come back to The Boatworks during the first week of January.

As you can imagine, there are daunting but exciting times ahead, while we get to know our gorgeous catamaran.