We recently acquired a boat. This is not as extravagant as it sounds. Boats like Loki - a Viking 26 narrowbeam cruiser - are not cripplingly expensive when they're more than fifteen years old. And we think we're going to have a lot of fun on this boat.

The learning curve for buying a boat is as steep upwards as the price depreciation curve is downwards. Loki is not the first boat we put an offer on. The first one was a Viking 23 which had been beautifully refurbished. We were excited about getting hold of the boat and taking it out while the weather was still good at the end of the summer. Then we got the survey done. As attractive as she appeared on the surface, she had a waterlogged cockpit floor and a weak engine transom. We didn't even know what a transom was; we do now. We also know lots about osmotic blistering. We have learned that, as with all things, when you want to buy a boat, going out the same day and simply buying one isn't always the best idea.

So we carried on looking. We narrowed down our search to a Viking 26 - not just 3 feet longer than the 23, but also having a rear cabin; a spare bedroom for friends and family to join us at weekends. A few weeks ago, we went to see Loki and took her for a test drive. We liked her, the surveyor liked her and, in a few days, she'll be ours.

This blog will be about what we do with, and on, Loki. One thing we plan to do is change her name - yes, we know it's supposed to be unlucky, but we're going to do it anyway. We've opted for Wand'ring Bark. It's from a Shakespeare sonnet that Eva's mother read at our wedding:

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments; love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
Oh, no, it is an ever fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandring bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of Doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.