The moment we realised it was worth it.

So there were times pretty recently when we wondered about leaving the boat and moving into a flat. The toil, stress, anxiety and above-all expense were getting to us.
But then something pretty cool happened. On our journey back from drydock, our skipper suggested getting a few hours travelling in then mooring up overnight in a creek. We tied up in the middle of this big empty expanse of water to a lonely old lighter and ate dinner on the roof as the sun set and the seabirds jabbered.
As the night crept in we discovered phosphorescence (as if being out in the middle of nowhere wasn't magical enough).
And we realised that we'd been doing it all wrong. We'd been trying to live in Serenity as if she were a house. All the boaty things had been annoying inconveniences. We were idiots and she showed us on that trip homewards what she was capable of if only we let her be herself.
It sounds silly, but I don't think we had grasped the full scale of what we were taking on when we made our home inside a ship. I had confessed in the past that growing up in a fishing town had lead me to not even like boats.
Until now. Now the possibilities of taking her out for weekends of adventure have been planted like seeds in my imagination. We've got a lot of learning to do before we can make that a reality but we do enjoy learning.

P.S. I reserve the right to change my mind about whether it was all worth it at any time and without notice.