Introducing Katoomba, our first floating home

 

Our journey into life afloat began not on the water, but in the skies. Thirty five thousand feet above the Indian Ocean, on a one way flight back from Australia with a baby on the way and a dream that didn’t yet have a boat. Katoomba, as it turned out, was the very beginning of everything.

At the time, we had made the decision to return to the UK to start a family and live on the water. We had fallen in love with a slower, more intentional way of life while travelling, and this felt like the natural next step. But of course, trying to buy a boat while living in another hemisphere is not exactly straightforward.

We landed back in the UK, jet lagged and hopeful, and started trawling through boat listings almost immediately. We spotted her quickly. An old narrowboat called Katoomba, named after one of our favourite mountain towns in Australia, nestled in the Blue Mountains. It felt like fate. She was tired, overplated, battered, and running a vintage Lister FR3 engine that we naively thought must be standard on every boat. She was not perfect, but she was ours. We bought her for next to nothing and jumped in, heart first.

The long haul to London

Our plan was to start our new life in London, so we cruised her all the way down from Cheshire. Mollie was 32 pregnant with our first, but determined to be part of the journey. She insisted on hopping off to open every lock along the way. We did not really know what we were doing, but we figured it out as we went.

We broke down a couple of times, got ourselves stuck more than once, and realised halfway through the trip that no one had ever shown us how to turn the boat around properly. But there was something beautiful about it all. We were building something new, not just fixing up an old boat but carving out a life, step by step.

Fixing her up

We spent a year living on Katoomba and during that time, we poured everything we had into her. Time, energy, money, and a whole lot of YouTube tutorials. We overhauled the engine, rewired the electrics, installed heating, and turned her into a warm and character filled home for our little family.

She taught us so much. About problem solving, about how to stay calm when things go wrong, and they really did go wrong, and about just how much work goes into making a space feel like home.

The decision to move on

After a year, we felt the pull to move again. We were already dreaming of the next project, so we sold Katoomba, took what we could from the sale, and threw ourselves into our next boat build. This time full time, no more trying to cram everything into evenings and weekends. That was the plan anyway.

A humbling first chapter

Of course, it did not quite work out that smoothly. We fell into the same hiccups buying and selling a few more times before we found our rhythm. But Katoomba was where it all started.

She was more than just our first boat. She was the beginning of our boat building journey, the place where we learned how to live afloat, and the vessel that taught us our first big lessons. She gave us the confidence to dream a little bigger, even when we did not have much more than drive and determination.

We will never forget her.

With love,
Mollie x