Winter Summary - Trials and Tribulations

Season 2 - Winter: The Unplanned Adventure Before the Adventure

When we finally lifted Halcyon Sea out of the water in early December — scraping ice off the deck, stuffing the last of our belongings into the car, and racing the daylight to get her settled into her winter cradle — we thought the hard part was over.
We were wrong.
Winter didn’t wait politely for us to catch our breath. It pounced.
Within 24 hours of leaving the boat in Scotland, we were already down the South of the country, living out of bags, juggling family commitments, club events, and the kind of travel schedule that would make a touring rock band wince.
Between December and March, we discovered that winter afloat — and winter off the boat — can be just as testing, hilarious, exhausting, and transformative as any passage we made last season.
This is how Season 2 really begins.

October–November: Condensation, Chaos, and the Great Wait

Before the lift‑out, we’d tried to stay aboard in Scotland. Nick had been promised winter work. We had a plan — or at least the outline of one. But the work never materialised, and the Scottish weather did.

Condensation dripped from every surface.

Every morning began with stripping the bed, lifting the mattresses, airing everything, and remaking it all again at night.
It was like running a damp B&B for two humans and a terrier.

Pepper thrived.
Tracey… did not.

Dark, wet dog walks. Cold mornings. Damp everything. The kind of bone‑deep chill that makes you question all your life choices.

Then a dear friend passed away, and everything shifted. We packed up early and headed south for the funeral, telling ourselves it would be a productive trip: doctors, vets, friends, goodbyes. We booked a Travelodge near Emsworth — glamorous, no; cheap, yes — and planned a ten‑day stay.
Ten days.
We should have known better!

When the ten days were up, Nick still hadn’t heard anything concrete about work. So we made a plan: Tracey would head back to the boat with Pepper, stopping at her sister’s on the way, and Nick would stay down south waiting for the elusive phone call.
We said our goodbyes as Tracey dropped Nick at his lodgings — romance at its finest — and parted ways, not knowing when we’d see each other again.

Except Tracey never made it back to the boat.

She reached her sister’s, exhaled for the first time in days, and promptly stayed for a few weeks. Meanwhile, Nick still had no work news, so he caught a train and joined her. A few days later, we both returned to the boat together — tired, relieved, and very ready to stop living out of bags.
But November had other plans.

The condensation battle intensified. The dark mornings grew darker. The cold grew colder. Tracey’s mental health took a hit. And then, like a beacon of hope, Val — Nick’s mum — phoned to say she’d be away the following week and we were welcome to stay at her house.
We didn’t need asking twice.

December Begins: Leaving Halcyon Sea and Boarding Takoa

By early December, we admitted defeat. Winter aboard wasn’t sustainable, not for us anyway. The boat needed to come out of the water, and we needed to get out of Scotland before Tracey dissolved entirely into a puddle of damp misery.

Packing was chaos.
Lift‑out day was chaos.
The drive south was chaos.

And then — suddenly — we were stepping aboard Takoa in Fareham, welcomed by Mike and Anne like long‑lost family. Their boat was warm, dry, and blissfully free of condensation. We slept like people who hadn’t slept properly in weeks.

The next morning, we slipped lines and headed up Portsmouth Harbour toward Gunwharf. For Nick, it was a full‑blown nostalgia trip. Every buoy, every mooring, every stretch of water sparked a memory from his RNSA Moorings days. It was like watching someone revisit their old school — equal parts pride, fondness, and “I can’t believe I used to do that every day.”

Gunwharf was everything we needed:
friends, laughter, dits, dinners, and the warm embrace of our FSMBC family.
Tracey even made it to dinner for the second year running — a personal triumph.
After a fabulous weekend, it was time to pack (again) and hit the road (again). December was only just getting started.

December Continues: Christmas, Car Parks, and Constant Motion

From Gunwharf we headed to Eastbourne for a night with Val before Nick played taxi and dropped her at the bus stop for her trip away. (She was meeting other friends so we didn't just dump her in the middle of nowhere). Suddenly we were alone in a house again — warm, quiet, still. It felt luxurious and alien in equal measure.

Then it was off to Peterborough for a week with Teresa and Martin. Then Essex. Then Fareham. Then Ninfield. Then Andover. Then back to Fareham. Our car began to smell permanently of travel bags, dog biscuits, and exhaustion.
Christmas at Nigel and Sarah’s was the first time we truly stopped. The club’s Christmas Jolly, the carols, the raffle, the shopping, the wrapping — and the turkey. Watching Nick supervise Nigel prepping a bird the size of a small planet was comedy gold. Sarah’s Christmas dinner was one of the best we’ve ever had.

But by the time we reached Andover, Tracey was done.
Not with people — never that — but with the constant movement.
The packing.
The unpacking.
The sleeping in different beds.
The feeling of being a guest everywhere and at home nowhere.
We were grateful. Deeply grateful.
But we longed to stop.

January: Illness, Ice, and the Search for a Front Door

On 1 January we headed back to Peterborough. The boat was on the hard, and staying aboard wasn’t an option — not with Pepper, not with the cold, not with the ladder. We’d arranged to stay with Teresa and Martin for at least January.

Then we all got sick.
Not just a sniffle — the full cold/flu horror that swept the country. None of us could work. None of us could think. We spent days sleeping, watching TV, and collectively spending what felt like £100 on cold remedies whilst we all tried our best to look after each other. It was miserable.
And in the middle of all this, Tracey’s mind began to spiral. Not about giving up the adventure — never that — but about surviving another winter like this. She craved stability. A front door. A place that was "theirs". She started looking at houses. Just looking. Just in case.

Nick recovered first and headed back to Scotland to start the mountain of boat jobs: replacing the diesel heater, fitting eleven new seacocks, sanding, antifouling, and tackling the endless list of “little jobs” that are never actually little. Tracey kept sending him to view houses. Nick never complained — he knew this mattered.
January blurred into February. Tracey had appointments in Fareham and club duties to complete, so she booked five nights in the Gosport Travelodge. While there, we decided to move all our belongings from storage in Fareham to a unit in Scotland. It made sense — if we needed anything, a 1000‑mile round trip wasn’t ideal.
But before heading to Fareham, we made a quick trip to Scotland to view a house Tracey couldn’t stop thinking about. We saw it. We loved it. And during our week in Fareham, we made an offer.
It was accepted.

February–March: A New Home, A New Balance, A New Beginning

From offer to moving in took just three weeks.
Three weeks of packing, repacking, loading the car, unloading the car, and apologising to Teresa and Martin for the mountain of belongings still in their house.
And then — suddenly — we had a home.
Our first home together that was truly ours and not rented.
The stress evaporated. The worry dissolved. In its place came excitement — real, fizzing excitement. We had a front door. We had wardrobes. We had a bed that didn’t move. We had heating that didn’t require diesel, ducting, or prayers.
We didn’t have a sofa yet, so we sat on garden chairs like students, but we didn’t care. We were home.

And the boat? She was close enough for Nick to pop down, finish the jobs, and come back to our own bed at night. The perfect balance.
Now she’s back in the water, ready for Season 2.

The West Coast awaits.
And this time, winter won’t be something to survive — it will be something we face with a home to return to.

We made it through.

And the next chapter begins now.Read more