I work as an IT contractor, spending most of my working week working away, living in hotels or rented houses. While working away I got talking to a contrator that I worked with and he said that what he did was to stay in his caravan, when I queried it he explained that he had bought a caravan and just parks it on a local caravan park, when his contract ends he takes it home and then moves it to the location of his next contract.
This got me thinking and after a while I hit upon the idea of buying a boat and moving it around as I moved around contracts, looking at the map of inland waterways it became apparent that there are more than enough places to put it when I was contracting.
The next problem was, what type of boat? It had to be reasonably inexpensive as the whole point of getting it was for it to be cheaper in the long run than staying in hotels or renting a house. I drew up a list of what I needed and it was quite simple, somewhere to eat, sleep and shower. I searched around and saw a couple of boats that fitted the bill but they were either too expensive or too far away, for example one that I viewed was in the isle of whight.
In the end I came across the Sabrina Swan, she was located in Tetchill, about an hour away from where I lived and also fitted the bill, she needed some TLC, but I thought it would give me something to do in the evenings. I tried to email the owner to arrange a viewing before I placed a bid as she was on Ebay, but didn't get response so I pulled out my maps and worked out roughly where she should be and headed off. I managed to find her without too much trouble and instantly fell in love with her.
I went home and set Auction Sniper to auto bid on her an then left it in the hands of fate. A couple of days later she was mine, I arranged to meet the owner at to pay for her, the owner explained that she had inherrited it from a friend and that it was too much work for her and it was with reluctance that she had put her up for sale.
So, there I was the proud owner of the Sabrina Swan, a 25' Ormelite Cruiser, she was looking a little sad and tired, but I could see her true potential.
Now comes the funny part of the story, I'd done all this without telling my partner who I had lived with for many years, I knew that she wouldn't approve and would not support me doing her up so I thought it would be an interesting surprise for her....
Little did I know that the company that managed the moorings that she was at had sent an invoice offering me the mooring, unfortunately the invoice was in the same format as that of my cleaners so my partner opened the envelope in my absence assuming it was the bill for the cleaners.
That was an interesting "surprise" for me when I got home from Sheffield that week...
