LIFE, DEATH AND BOATYARDS...... THE START OF A NEW ADVENTURE

September 2023

Looking back at the preparations, it seems almost implausible that it should have been such hard work. I feel sure that friends and family must have been wondering what all the fuss was about. I mean, you’re giving up work and getting ready to swan off… get a grip!

But, as ever, it’s not quite that simple. It’s often not easy to pinpoint the moment a journey starts. Obviously well before the physical point of departure, which we finally achieved, sailing gently away from Wearde Quay on an ebbing tide on the morning of 16 September. I don’t recall a specific moment that it was conceived, but even returning from our last outing in 2017, it was understood that we would be heading out again.

Six years of land-based life has felt like a long time, but when we headed home the last time, it felt like the right choice. Brexit had happened, leaving Lucia’s citizenship status worryingly undefined and my mum was showing increasing signs of the dementia that was to steadily erode her memory, confidence, independence and ultimately her whole personality over the proceeding years.

So, on returning, we set about the things to be done. Lucia got to work on the byzantine British citizenship application process, we persuaded Mum to relocate to Devon; the decision clear after she woke with the fire brigade hammering on her door and the house full of smoke. Meanwhile, Lucia chose one of the several job offers and I, having decided I was no longer fit to be an employee, set up as an independent consulting engineer. Beatrice started school in the tiny but perfectly formed Doddiscombesleigh Primary. Sula lived quietly on her mooring at Wearde, and we managed a few weeks of sailing each Summer which is the usual unsatisfactory way of keeping a cruising boat in the UK. 

Covid happened to us all and that was when we really lost Mum. Unable to visit for such an extended time inevitably meant that she didn’t know me when we were finally allowed to return. It did also bring us Joseph, a new grandson, even though we were unable to visit for a painfully long time. After a critical piece of legal advice confirmed that Lucia was eligible for citizenship without further delays, the prospect of another trip began to take form and in August of 2022 we had Sula hauled out in Mountbatten to be repainted, have new deck anti-slip and new arch fitted to mount a bigger solar array, together with a raft of other maintenance and improvement jobs. 

The boatyard stay should have lasted about 4 months and we organised accordingly; winding down Stothert Consulting Engineers and giving notice to school and employer. In our perfect plan, this would have had us putting the final preparations together in April and May and casting off in June of 2023. 12 months later, after 6 months of badgering, argument and stress, we finally got Sula back. Leaving us with a race against time to finish our own preparations, sorting out all the lost, broken and variously imperfect results of the refit before we could begin looking for a late weather window to get south of the seemingly endless stream of Atlantic depressions that had been assaulting the UK through July and August. 

September also included a return to the boatyard to replace antifouling that was flaking off and fixing leaking diesel (out) and seawater (in). Finally ready to depart and lying as we are, storm-bound in the River Fal waiting for fair winds for Biscay, it’s possible to reflect that in the way of ill winds, some good has come from our months of delay. 

Shortly before our last big departure, my father had died. The end had been quite sudden, albeit probably a decade later than we had all expected and it had all the significance that finally losing an elderly and much-loved parent inevitably does, but it left us freer to sail away than we would otherwise have felt. There are always reasons not to leave, some more difficult than others to overcome, and leaving Mum was a particularly hard one for me. I had been rationalising it on the basis that she didn’t know who we were anyway and would presumably not be aware of our absence. Also, she was a great long-distance sailor and would have wanted for us to go…. But still. Then in the Spring of this year, she had a series of chest infections which softened her up for the final one and she slipped away at the end of May. 

Selfishly, it was something of a relief of course, but as anyone who has been close to Alzheimer’s will know, there was also not much of who she was to finally say goodbye to. We buried her in a woodland plot on the edge of Dartmoor and felt happy that she has such a beautiful place to rest. 

And finally. In August, Ryan and Yasmin brought us a new grandson Flynn. Gorgeous to behold and difficult to leave behind, knowing that we will miss so much of his, Joe and Phoebie’s growing. But there’s some things that just have to be done…. So, how long until the next weather update?