About me

How does a boy from Derbyshire, who spent his career living and working in Leicestershire, all as far from the sea as you can get in the UK, end up with a passion for sailing that would guide every part of life's great plan?

This is my story ...

"Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught." - Oscar Wilde

When I was young, and I mean young, as in just starting school kind of age, I had big issues with this education lark. I never wanted to be at school or be doing what the teachers were gamely trying to get me to do. Being the absolute opposite of an early riser didn’t help of course, but there must have been more to it. Years later when talking to my mum about those days she related a story that I had long since forgotten. After a particularly disruptive day I was asked why I didn’t like being at school, “Because they don’t teach me about sailing!” came the reply from my 5 (or so) year old self. My obsession with sailing was set already.

Lough Swilly, my childhood playground where I learnt to sail.

"It is not that life ashore is distasteful to me. But life at sea is better." - Sir Francis Drake

In those early years Lough Swilly sailing club on the north coast of Donegal, Republic of Ireland, was my playground, my spiritual home. It still has a hook in my heart to this day. I sailed initially a little with my dad on a large German design open dinghy …. I say dinghy, this thing was big enough and heavy enough to need its own mooring! I then moved up to being crew, or more accurately movable ballast, on an International Dragon keel-boat. The story of how I nearly lost my father overboard on the first time I was entrusted to helm is one that haunts me to this day, and one very good reason to keep me away from competitive racing on boats.

Over the years I sailed with my father and then on my own, with friends and partners, around various parts of the British Isles, and ultimately crossing the Atlantic just after the turn of the millennium. The combination of island hopping for the first few weeks in the Caribbean, followed by the epic trip across the north Atlantic was a life changing experience.

"I must go down to the sea again, to the lonely sea and the sky …
I must go down to the sea again, for the call of the running tide ...
I must go down to the sea again, to the vagrant gypsy life."
From Sea Fever by John Masefield

It was around this time I had begun to become aware of a movement loosely known as Sea Gypsies. Living and travelling on small boats, exploring the world in their own time. Now this was just at the infancy of the Internet, and so information was sparse, but the idea had me hooked from the very start.

Unfortunately I was already hooked into the circle of consumerism, with a house and a job with a good pension. And then when a new relationship blossomed a short while after, with 2 wonderful kids involved things got delayed again. I have no regrets about those years, but when the circle of life moved on and I again found myself single then there was only one direction I was heading ...

South!

Now with a boat to live on, and a pension to live off, there is nothing to stop me. Family and friends have had to accept the idea that I will be sailing over the horizon soon enough. Some have fallen by the wayside as they are unable to see a life different to their own and support independent thinking, sorry but their loss not mine.

Mobile holiday accommodation in exotic and far flung places could be on offer for those who want to experience a different way of life, of course you might have to go off the beaten track to find me.