That’s one of the reasons these early days are called shakedown cruises.

Much of the time between Galesville and Charleston has been a struggle to adapt the volume of our ‘stuff’ to the volume of storage available on the boat. I talk a good game about living clutter free, but I seem to have two of everything from the double life we’ve lived for the past decade, except a place to put it now.

We’ve made good progress, but still every day finds us looking for something, shuffling things around, repacking, and leaving little piles of treasure next to a dumpster (‘closer to a good home here’). You can only move some of this stuff so many times before it makes that one-way trip over the rail no matter how handy it might be some day or how much it once cost or who gave it to you. In its way Arion, at 35’ long and 9’2” beam, had a better mix of useful storage options than Galivant’s deep vats in the cockpit and chopped up shelves with small doors in the cabin.

I’m trying to remind myself: each thing that occupies space ‘just in case’ keeps something else away, something like clarity and lightness of spirit. But my fist sometimes just won’t open!

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