Author: Mel

Living aboard a sailboat, blogging about the places we visit and the adventures we have. Love hiking, cycling, scuba, animals and adventure.

Selling Our House and Everything in It – Mostly

We just got home from a hectic month of selling our house and everything in it, well mostly. It’s been less than a week since we returned to the boat in Cartagena, and I finally feel relaxed. It was a mad dash to get it all done before closing and visit the people and places we wanted to in Toronto. Selling a house and moving out is a big life moment, but doing it to stay full time on a 46 foot boat and travel on it is life-changing. I also realized there are a lot of tips I could have used about how to purge, so I am sharing them here.

What to Keep

Selling our house and everything in it could have been traumatic. But we were primed for it through a combination of terrible tenants and a fun life on our boat. Other people have to do this under much more trying circumstances, and I am aware of our fortune. Here are some ways to make this process easier.

The hardest part is deciding what to keep. Will you use it and do you even like it? If the answer to both is NO, then don’t keep it. This time, our second and more final round of purging after 2.5 years on the boat, I was more cutthroat. I washed any clothes that seemed even mildly off – the beauty of an in-home washer and dryer – and piled up anything I have no chance of wearing anytime soon. If clothes were in good shape, they went into the DONATE pile. If not, straight into trash bags. On a boat, those would become rags, but we weren’t flying rags back to Colombia with us!

How to purge Give aways for Salvation Army Thrift Store
If you don’t need it, sell it or give it away
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Return to Toronto After Living on a Boat

Our return to Toronto after living on a boat hasn’t been smooth. The Covid pandemic did not make it easy, but having our vaccinations helped get us in the country. After that? Mayhem and memories.

Why The Return

This return to Toronto is temporary. We’ve come to realize over the years that our house in Toronto is no longer our “home.” Our boat is now home. But before we moved onto the boat we didn’t know if we’d last on it, so we kept the house in case we wanted to come back for good. But now we know we love boat life and that’s our life now. With the good real estate market, we sold our house and we wanted to return to Toronto to empty and close on the house.

Flying to Toronto

As soon as the government announced that vaccinated Canadians could fly in without 2 weeks quarantine, we booked our flight. Unfortunately, we weren’t fast enough to get a ticket for Domino. At the Bogotá airport, we found out why: almost everyone in the airport had a dog! We felt like we were at a dog show, not an airport. Don’t worry, Domino has excellent cat-sitters/friends in Cartagena and lots of places to hang out on Sava.

One of the cute dogs at the airport in Bogotá
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Cartagena Highlights

Cartagena is one of the biggest cities we’ve sailed into, and even with Covid lockdowns, we found it lively and entertaining. Even though this isn’t our first visit to Cartagena, we still had a lot to see and discover. I went on some tours my first time here, but I’ve done a lot in the 5 years in between visits, so the city seems new to me. It’s been a blast exploring Cartagena again. Read on for my Cartagena highlights.

Orientation to Cartagena

When you arrive in Cartagena, the views are stunning. The ocean is next to skyscrapers and old stone walls. There’s an ancient clock-tower and a modern gold building. On the water are old wooden sailing ships and luxurious catamarans. On the streets are women in colorful traditional costumes, including fruit hats, alongside hundreds of people driving mopeds.

Old and new in Cartagena Colombia
Old and new in Cartagena Colombia
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Things to Do in Pawleys Island SC

We had a whirlwind trip to the U.S. in May, a break from the boat that didn’t really feel like a break because we were so busy! In addition to getting the coveted Covid vaccine, we spent a few weeks catching up with friends, family, and exploring new places. Much of that time was spent where my mom lives and we found a lot of things to do in Pawleys Island SC.

About Pawleys Island

Pawleys Island is a small beach town on a barrier island in the Low Country of South Carolina. Things move slower there, and it’s pretty and peaceful most of the time. Located 70+ miles north of Charleston and 25 miles south of Myrtle Beach, we drove from Florida to visit my mom.

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Vaccine Hunting in Florida

All your “I got Vaxxed” posts motivated us. Colombia is struggling to inoculate its residents, so there is little chance we would have gotten vaccinated there soon. We researched options and went vaccine hunting in Florida.

Long Time Away From the Boat

We left Colombia a week ago. It’s been a long strange week but a good one. The weirdest, and hardest part, is being away from Sava. It’s only been a week so far, but that’s the longest we’ve been away from the boat. In Curaçao we lived in an airbnb for a few weeks, but we still visited Sava daily while she was in the yard.

We are travelers, so being away from home isn’t an issue. But being away from our boat feels wrong. It feels like snorkeling without fins or traveling without luggage or Linus without his blanket. Sava is safe at a marina and will be fine when we get back, but I have to say I am antsy to get back even though we’re having lots of fun and reuniting with lots of people.

They say that sailors are called back to the sea; for us, it’s not that extreme, but we are drawn to marinas, bars on the water, and our cruising friends when we are not near our boat. We are not used to being away!

Sava Cartagena
One last photo before leaving Sava in Cartagena

It’s been two years and a few months since we sailed away from the U.S., and coming back by air almost feels like cheating. Yet, this was what we would have done if Covid hadn’t stopped travel for so long. We hope to plan more trips by air in between our passages, and hope for visitors to return to Sava before long.

Goals for the Trip

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