A MARINA MOVE

For the keen sailor, there is perhaps no better place to live than on a marina. This is life on the ocean wave, or as near as you can get without setting out to sea – a boaty home with a home for your boat right on the doorstep. Think gleaming white yachts on glittering water, the clink of lanyards on a sea breeze, summer regattas, gin and tonic on the deck… it all sounds rather glamorous, but the marina lifestyle is not out of reach, nor is it exclusive to boat-owners.

Di Herbert had moored her motorboat at Hampshire’s Hythe Marina Village for 20 years before she finally took up residence herself. ‘We used the boat as a sort of floating cottage,’ she says. Eventually, she and her late husband bought a house on the marina, moving from their former home in landlocked Leicestershire to Hythe, which has 225 homes arranged around three locked basins close to the Port of Southampton. Like most of her neighbours, she has parking for her car on one side of the house and a berth for her boat on the other. ‘My kitchen