October

Ahh October, the craziness has well & truly begun!!

With Geoff finishing work at the end of September, it has brought about some sanity in-house. Emphasis on some, lets not give any illusions that we are all suddenly 100% sane in our house.😂

October is typically crazy for us, with family birthday celebrations, Canadian Thanksgiving, a wedding anniversary & halloween. At the end of it, we (as in the old people, not the kids) usually fall in a heap, happy to have survived another October.

This year it’s all that + trying to get organised for what lays ahead, and homeschooling activities, including a thai cooking class for all of us & blacksmithing for the oldest . C-R-A-Z-Y, but in a good way.

Geoff has been especially busy, moving forward with renovations and other projects we have on the go, as well as doing a lot of the kids school work with them.

We have managed to paint a few rooms, do most of the mudding in the last room in the basement that required it (so that it’s almost ready to paint, we will need to pick a colour for that soon I guess) and the bathroom is steadily moving forward.

He’s doing an amazing job with homeschooling to be honest too. His use of ChatGPT/ AI Automation has definitely enhanced the homeschooling experience for the kids. There’s a noticeable difference in prep work too. Instead of spending hours creating or searching for a specific worksheet, like I used to do, he can now create tailored worksheets in minutes, great for math & english work so far.

I think I’ve convinced him to write about the process as well, so be sure to watch out for that post, or better yet subscribe to our updates… go on, you know you want to (just add your email off to the top right & hit subscribe).

In boat news, one of our big wins, was that we managed to get a watermaker organised. A watermaker was on our must have list, so that we can generate our own fresh water as we go. We can carry 800L of fresh water on our boat, so this will give us the ability to top up our tanks as we go, and not be so reliant on water supplies coming from docking often.

Anchoring out & then using our dinghy to come in for what should mostly be food supplies will be much easier to manage & keep costs down too.

For those curious, we purchased the Zen 50l watermaker by Schenker. It makes 10L less per hour than the one we were aiming for, but has a smaller footprint & was also thousands less, so it we’re good with it.

“The Pile” of stuff that we’ve been collecting since early September, is growing every day, as we continue to figure things out too. We have been piling everything we are looking to bring, in a section of the lounge for now. Very soon it will move into a big open space near the fireplace, so that we can actually start to sort things into groups of items & go through our lists a little easier.

Packing for what is essentially an expedition, means that we lots of different things to bring, there’s (folding) bikes & items related to our bikes, things for water activities, kitchen gear, electrical, tech & camera equipment, homeschooling, creative arts, boardgames & even some cleaning & hygiene items, not to mention some clothes as well.

We have no end date, which means constantly reminding ourselves not to get too carried away, because the reality is, all that stuff still needs to go somewhere on the boat & everything needs to have a tangible purpose.

Hopefully our plan for staggered arrival dates, will help to make sure as little as possible is left behind too.

Geoff & Emily will go down first & bring down as much as they possibly can in the first load (see countdown clock labelled phase one on the left below). Then, Levi & I will bring what’s left, a couple of weeks later (phase two below, on the right) plus anything else that we managed to forget/ need to procure ASAP.

Kinda crazy to think how little time is left, before all of our planning over the last few years, becomes reality, something that we are all very excited about.


Please feel free to leave any questions or comments you have about our trip, in the comment section below

-E