A few days of fiddling

I'd got a couple of free days on board with the aim of dealing with the essential maintenance tasks ahead of the winter

The first job was a minor rearrangement of the plumbing system to give us the facility of flushing the heads with fresh water. The smaller aft water tank has been dedicated to this purpose and will also deliver a temporary cooling water feed to the engine. This enables the engine to be run on the mud berth and the fresh water flush avoids picking up the silty water that tends to make a mess of the loo even when the tide is in and it can be used. We still can't use the loo when the tide is out though

The major task was the annual / 250 hour engine service. The oil and filter change went without a hitch and then I pulled the heat exchanger tube stack to examine it.

As I half expected it was more than a little choked up with crud and even some weed that had escaped the clutches of the water filter

Off I popped to the DIY store to pick up five litres of brick cleaner acid, a sovereign remedy for cleaning tube stacks and into the rubber bucket went the stack and half the acid.

Much bubbling ensued for the next hour or two with an occasional stirring of the pot to keep things going. The received wisdom is to leave it to soak overnight but it wasn't necessary as the stack came up good as new after less than three hours

With the now pristine tube stack reinstalled and the alternator belt re-tensioned, the job was done and it remained only to test run the engine utilising the fresh water feed to the seawater system for cooling

The engine ran perfectly once I got it started however the engine start battery is clearly on its last legs as I had to cross-link the domestics in to fire up the engine.

Happily there were no leaks and everything was just as it should be.

Unhappily, the Sterling battery charger took umbrage at the batteries being cross-linked as I'd stupidly forgotten to turn it off before starting the engine. Even so, it shouldn't have gone phut but it did.

So that means a new battery charger and a new engine battery. Expenses we could do without as matters are moving on apace and we now expect to be looking for a new home for Erbas within a matter of months.

Hey ho!

The Great Escape - we have a landing

And a hall, stairs, bathroom, all the usual features of a house!

Yes, we've found the house that will be Carls' new home and our temporary staging post on our way to living on board.

It's a good old fashioned Victorian terrace in a quiet side street just five minutes walk from Kettering town centre. The layout is basically typical "two up, two down" with a kitchen extension to the rear but unusually the extension is two storey with the bathroom above the kitchen and a single story utility room beyond the bathroom complete with downstairs loo (most properties of this type have a downstairs bathroom beyond the single storey kitchen extension)

There's a small garden to the rear with an outbuilding and a side alley shared with the next door neighbour.

The alley is a major plus point as it avoids having to drag wheelie bins through the house

The outbuilding is interesting and gives a clue to the history of the street. It's one of a back to back range of outbuildings that extend the whole length of the street and the parallel street beyond

Internally, it has a small storage area beyond the door where I suspect there may have originally been the toilet (or "ootside netty" as we'd have called it back home in Sunderland) which may not have been served by mains sewerage. The rest of the building is very well constructed in brick and there is even a small fireplace in the back left corner, now blocked up. The biggest clue is the large window which floods the room with light

Put that into the context of Kettering being second only to Northampton in the Victorian shoe trade and it's very likely that the houses were built for shoe trade outworkers

(The "lawn" will have to go though!)

Internally, the house is in good decorative order (although the decor wouldn't, to be honest, be what we or Carl would choose but redecorating can be left until time, money and inclination are available). It isn't large, the house we looked at earlier in the week was bigger inside but it's big enough

There's no off road parking but that would have been too much to hope for. The on street parking is residents permit only though which is a plus as it means the street isn't used by people working in the town centre trying to escape paying for all day parking.

We elected to offer the asking price given the way properties are selling like hot cakes. This house had only been listed the previous afternoon and whilst we'd got in first on it there were several viewings booked to follow us. Carl has the mortgage arranged all bar the final paperwork, I'll instruct the solicitors by email today and get the paperwork to them tomorrow and if all goes well I see no reason we can't have everything done and dusted before Christmas (and I'll be kicking the solicitors up the bottom on a regular basis to make sure the process moves along swiftly!

The time rapidly approaches when we can start the search for Bigger Boat in earnest :)

The Great Escape - we have lift off

Assuming all goes well, step one has been achieved and then some!

The motivation to get some real progress on sorting the house out came from a phone call from the agents who sold our dear departed neighbours house. Weeks after the sale had gone through, they were still receiving calls about it and they had a queue of people wanting to buy a similar property

We had had them value our place as it stood and the answer came back at a level that was unsurprising but somewhat less than we really needed to achieve. Given what next door had sold for, and the level of interest, the agents were now suggesting we could almost certainly reach the minimum we needed to move forward

So last Wednesday, with the house tidier than it has ever been in the seventeen years we've lived here, round came the photographer and the measurer to get the info to create a nice sales brochure. They didn't mess about, by mid-morning the next day I had a draught copy in my in-box and after a couple of tweaks to the wording by mid-afternoon the house was on the market.

And that's when it went mad. Berserk even. We had two viewings on Friday afternoon and I'm pretty certain the first couple would have put in an offer in due course. Then Saturday afternoon just got silly! We, literally, had people queuing in the street to view the place.

The first couple to view were clearly in love with the place. They hadn't gone away whilst the second lot were viewing and then they collared the agent conducting the viewings and tabled a genuine offer of £5k over the asking price to secure the place.

Having talked to them extensively myself and having a clear picture of their circumstances and what they wanted, we had no hesitation in accepting the offer on the spot and taking the house off the market without further ado. The remaining viewings were cancelled and that was that

(They have sorted out their solicitors already and want to complete asap so they are not messing about!)

So that brings us to phase 2 of the cunning plan - buying a flat. Or not

Because it has become increasingly clear that a flat is not actually that good an option. There are two reasons - flat prices in the Kettering area have shot up way faster than house prices (reflecting a national trend apparently) to the point where there's not a huge gap between the asking price of a two bed flat and that of a two bed terraced house. In fact, some flatts we might have been interested in are actually dearer than some houses we might fancy!

The second reason is something we had no previous experience of. Ground rent and service charges. It turns out that on average in this area these add up to upwards of £80 a month and often more than £100 a month. When you add that monthly outlay onto the cost of the mortgage on, say, a £90k flat you have an outgoing that would comfortabke fund the mortgage on a £100k plus terraced house

So we've adapted to suit and the search is now on for a two bed terraced house within walking distance of Kettering town centre.

And yesterday we found one. A rather nice one. In fact, it's an absolute cracker. Vacant possession, right location (near enough) and in absolutely apple pie order having been recently redecorated and fitted with a new kitchen

The fly in the ointment is that it's £10k over budget!

The selling agent and the mortgage advisor are looking at ways and means to do a deal on it so it's not a complete non-starter but frankly I don't think it's going to come off so the search goes on