Post #2494104

On Wednesday, this week, a possible new custodian for Wrack is flying to Cagliari from Northern Italy to spend a couple of days aboard, to view the boat, and discuss the 'nuts and bolts' of a transfer of ownership. As I've written before, we intend to 'gift' the vessel, paying forward the generosity that we have experienced from this community. We continue to work on the boat to prepare her for at least one last passage. Despite her age and sea-worn appearance, Wrack is still a sound, sea-kindly vessel and with a little more investment, is still capable of extended ocean voyages. She has been a cosy 'tiny home' for Given and me, and despite the past 18 months in which poor health has made life aboard more difficult, it will feel odd to think of ourselves no longer as 'sea dwellers'. "Maybe we can sail to mainland Italy via Tunisia," Given has said. She is only half-joking. Although eager to make a home on terra firma again, she too will miss the sea, and our wider-ranging adventures. The north coast of Tunisia is just 120 sea miles from Cagliari. We love North Africa's deserts and we still talk with longing about southern Morocco, where we lived for a few months five years ago (we spent nearly a year in Tangier, in the north, between 2021 and 2023). As I write this, there is a small pod of dolphins feeding between the marina pontoons, just metres from Wrack's transom. All morning, flamingoes have been flying overhead in ragged V-formations, en route to wetlands either side of Cagliari. A lone, black-furred nutria lurks beneath the timber pontoon to which Wrack is tethered, unsettling the beautiful white-feathered egret that visits us daily to prey on schools of flat-head mullet feeding on the weed along Wrack's keel. We are going to miss being amidst all this, just as we will miss the subtle (and sometimes sudden and boisterous) shifts of weather and sea state which we experience aboard every day. We are moving forward. But we still have now idea of where we're going — about where we *can* go. Once we leave Wrack, we will be adrift. We are skilled at paring our lives down to the bare essentials — we are doing it now as we figure out what little to take with us when we leave Wrack, when we return (hopefully, not for long) to an unsheltered life — but after all these years, we have very little left to shed. We have lost long-standing friendships. Two of our four children have turned their backs on us. At least, we have been able to help our youngest return 'home' to Australia and a more secure foothold for her future: "One good thing," Given reminds me.