Becoming liveaboards
Fay and Jack’s boatbuilding adventures were first published in PBO’s April 2019 issue, followed by the Scarborough Years (September 2019) and the Scottish Years (January 2020)
We took the plunge! (I’m not going to say, “Burned our boats”!) I really pushed for this major, life-changing decision. My husband, Jack, also wished to pursue our dream, but he was rather more level-headed and knew that if the venture failed, then there’d be no return to what, after all, had become a comfortable lifestyle for us.
In the early 1980s, after taking financial advice and after a lot of heart searching, we put our house on the market and took all the necessary steps to ‘run away to sea’. When I told my father of our plans, his remark was: “When will you get this damn silly nonsense out of your heads?”
Well, we never did and like Edith Piaf had no regrets!
Our three children were all living independent lives, so we were not really needed, except should any emergencies arise. Our very good sailing friends (our elder daughter was living with their son at the time – and the couple are still together!) came up trumps and gave house room to some of our most precious belongings. So from living in a nice detached house, we condensed everything else down to the necessities for existing in a 30ft yacht – and a 30ft yacht is a very small vessel!
To be proper liveaboards there were quite a few modifications to make us comfortable as well as the prime concern of being safe.
We had no illusions that the life would entail balmy evenings, drinking G&Ts in the cockpit and
