We're not going anywhere today!

The marina has waves with frothy tips!  The wind is gusting violently, and boats around the pound are rocking against their moorings.  I dislike the sedentary habit, but we're going nowhere in the Kantara in this!  Perhaps I'll go out for a walk later.

The alarm clock went off at 6:30 this morning... cold memories of weekdays as a teacher... and my mobile rang 15 minutes later with a delivery driver saying he would be with us in half an hour to bring our sofa.  Sure enough, our sofa was delivered and squeezed in through the forward doors.  And it's lovely - so much better than the leather chairs, which were also lovely, but just not right for the space.

Space has been an issue three times today.  First the sofa.  Second...

We called in a boat fitter to look at the shower room/toilet, and he arrived today.  The shower room has a problem...

It has a lovely shower, perfectly good toilet (as far as boat loos go), but, the basin...  The basin has been fitted into the tiny space left between the shower and the outside wall - around 15".  And it's been set back about 6", too.  It's unusable.  I can't understand how the previous owners managed, how the first owner had it made that way.  Kantara was featured in the July 2000 edition of Waterways World magazine, when she was brand new.  The writer goes right through the boat, and sings its praises, but when he comes to the basin, he is more than a little surprised.

Now of course we knew about this when we bought Kantara, and we knew that we would have to do something about it, so along comes Roy, the boat fitter, to look at the problem with us.  And he came up with an excellent suggestion, and has gone away to draw up plans and a quote for us.  It's going to be usable!

Third space issue today...

Our conversation with Roy turned at one point to the washing machine, which sits in a wall cupboard opposite the basin.

What's the problem here?  Well, not that Roy can't do the job without obstructing access to the machine, but simply that, if ever we have to get rid of it and replace it, it simply cannot get out of any of the doors and hatches in the boat.  It can't even get out of the shower room door into the corridor outside.  The first owners of Kantara must have had her built around it!  How's that for forward thinking?  We hadn't spotted that before - but it wouldn't have stopped us buying Kantara if we had.

"Space, the final frontier!"