Vagabond afloat

I think I’m going to buy a boat!” My parents faces dropped, in the way that only parents whose now-adult offspring has just announced that they intend to do something stupid and dangerous can. The year was 2020, the coronavirus was raging, and I had just returned to the UK after several years of absence, fleeing back across the Irish Sea with my tail between my legs as the relationship to which I had dedicated the last three years of my life collapsed around me.

Watching the sun sink into the sea behind me, a long side-lined dream began to resurface.

I had learned to sail at a young age, mostly in Toppers, Wanderers, and other small dinghies, with the occasional memorable foray aboard larger craft. It was around this time that this idea had begun to take shape in my naïve, youthful, brain. I wanted to sail, not just across the placid waters of the lakes of my native Devon, but for far greater distances, and for far longer. I wanted to live on the water full-time, to cross oceans, to see far-off lands. A romantic notion to be sure, but as I mooched around old haunts, having ignominiously been obliged to move back in with my long-suffering family, this old dream begun to take shape, to solidify into a plan.

As the Wexford coast dropped astern of the Stena Europe, I took stock. I had a car, along with a small amount of savings salvaged