How did this crazy idea of living on a boat start?

Well, what can I say?

I guess this has always been one of those crazy impossible secret dreams (or not so secret in the case of John). One that I've never thought would become real for all sorts of different reasons.

So let's go back to the beginning....

The short story:

John started working in the company that I had just left the week before, and where most of my friends also worked.

I decided to organise a Yum Cha (traditional Chinese lunch where dumplings and other delicacies are served) with a lot of my colleagues as a "farewell" gathering.

My ex-boss and wife, who I'm good friends with said they were bringing a new staff member so that he could meet the people outside the office, and asked if that was ok, I said yes he could join the group lunch. Another couple friends of ours, that also worked in the company asked the same, so once again I said yes.

It came to the day of the lunch and both couples that invited John cancelled at the last minute. I was stuck with a stranger crashing my lunch and none of my ex-colleagues, now his new colleagues knew him, so I had to make him feel welcome... I guess that a few years later I'm still doing a great job making him feel welcome!

(We starting dating a few weeks later, move in together a month later etc. etc.)

Now The Dream part:

Later that year a friend of his, a couple that lives in Hong Kong on a boat asked if we could do some cat-sitting during the X'mas break and we accepted. So there we were living in someone else's boat commuting to work (John in Macau, me within Hong Kong) sleeping like little babies because of the gentle waves at the marina and John says: "we could do this you know, living on a Junk" (it's a big Chinese-style boat much bigger than the apartment we had back then). I replied: "Yeah but I would prefer to do it in a real sailboat, although it's much smaller"

Johns eyes just lit up, "you crazy girl, you want to live on a proper sailboat" OMG now I'm really in love (OK, this is how I saw his face, kind of cartoonish style with huge shiny eyes).

For a few months, we considered the option, but the waiting list for a mooring in Aberdeen seems to be quite long so we put this dream on hold. Every once in a while this idea would resurface, we would do some research and put it back on the shelve.

In the meantime we were also daydreaming of quitting our jobs and just go live in an isolated farm (see a pattern here...) anyway, a year and a half later when this dream resurfaced again we were going to Portugal to visit my family, so we started checking a few boats online and decided to go check 3 of them in one of the marinas in Lisbon.

Well, let's just say that the ones we had selected were not available to see for different reasons. The broker volunteered to show us 3 other boats that fitted in our brief, although one of them was well outside our BUDGET!

You can only guess what happened next, right?!

I fell in love with the "out of BUDGET" boat, and John said yes!

And that is another story.