News that the two of us were moving onto a boat elicited a range of responses: 'Won't you get seasick?' 'Why would you want to?' 'Where will you put all your stuff?' 'I'm so jealous!'
My most pragmatic friend couldn't fathom the logistics - surely one three-bed, two living-room house wouldn't fit into a 14-metre converted fishing trawler? Not to mention the golf clubs, luggage, mountain of books and so on.
But unlike my Australian compatriot, I'd had practice. Moving to Hong Kong had been the best lesson in taking only what is needed.
And to that friend who had taken an overseas posting before and advised that I would never miss whatever I left behind: you were right. A decade after our move to Hong Kong, boxes of 'stuff' left in storage have yet to see the light of day.
And anyway, our boat has storage space - an abundance of it, in fact, because of the trawler's inherent hull space (the former fish hold) and canny interior design. It has what many Hong Kong flats do not: two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a full kitchen (with oven), and two levels of outdoor living space.
But to soothe my friends' fears, I asked those in the know, or those already living on boats, how they dealt with the change and what they make of life on the water.
For Californian Janelle Weber, downsizing from a large, Tuscan-style estate in Rancho Santa Fe to a motor yacht in Discovery Bay, storage space was high on her mind.