The Ostfreise saga

When I moved to France eleven years ago my husband was still working and he wanted to keep the small weekend boat that we had in Cambridgeshire so that he could escape for weekend and relax in beautiful surroundings. That was OK while he was working in the south of England, but suddenly he was offered a contract in the Caribbean and within two weeks he was gone.

He never had time to sort out the boat before he went, or even to visit it and remove personal stuff and make sure she was clean and tidy. Fortunately she has always been kept in a marina where they have done their best to keep her safe. Sadly that did not include keeping her in good repair, but she was stored out of the water and was in a secure yard, so at least she was safe.

Now my husband has retired and joined me in France and one of the things we knew we must make a priority was to go to England and sort out the poor old Ostfreise so that we could sell her.

Our first idea was to rent a cottage so that we could take the dogs with us and stay near to the boat yard - make it a working holiday. Unfortunately I couldn't find a  reasonably priced, dog friendly cottage to rent nearby, so that idea was a non-starter.

Then I thought about a tent - we have a small one that we have stayed in with the dogs, but it's not a place you'd like to spend two weeks!    

So I started to search the small ads for something a bit bigger and found a trailer tent for sale. What a wonderful thing it is - bigger than a caravan, two double bedrooms off the ground and two singles underneath the doubles, a kitchen, toilet and loads of space that all packs into an easy to tow trailer! It's a really amazing thing!

So we arrived in Dover on a beautiful sunny day        and I'm glad to say that this is the weather that we had for most of the two weeks. The campsite is attached to the marina, so all we had to do to work on the boat was walk across the field. It's very beautiful there in Earith and the marina has a lot of visiting wildlife, including a couple of seals      and a herd of geese (yes, I know it's called a gaggle!)           woke me up very early every morning!

We found Ostfreise in a very dark and dismal corner of the boat yard, so we started work and waited for them to be able to lift her out and put her somewhere a bit nicer!

Eventually she was clean inside and out and was ready to be painted. At this point we thought that the weather might change so she was again moved into a big tent so that she could be painted with no worries about rain.

So, at the end of the fortnight the boat is painted, the inside is clean and tidy and now hopefully, she is all ready for a new owner!