I wonder what proportion of Yachting Monthly readers are boat-owners? And what proportion are dreamers? And how many of the latter spend how many years wondering how to become the former?

Do you remember those inspired Glenfiddich advertisements in YM with an alluring picture of a yacht under full sail, surging along beneath majestic Scottish coastal scenery? ‘One day you will’, read the caption. But when would that day come?

And wherefrom the necessary capital? Camelot’s ‘It could be you’ had proved forever vacuous, and Ernie only provided pocket money. A marine mortgage? Very high interest. A mortgage on the house? Lower interest, so, after only a moment’s soul-searching, and perhaps minor marital friction, emphatically yeah!

And now the yacht. The dream had always been of a high-quality one, and numerous boat shows had left me with high-quality hankerings.

There was something promising in Sardinia. So a visit followed. But no, this boat clearly needed an expensive refit. Hmm! Another possibility in Turkey. Oooh no! Tired decks were not encouraging, and the assorted grot in the bilges said it all.

The broker, undeterred, made a radical suggestion: ‘How about a white-goods yacht?’ What, some mass production, blindingly white, run-of-the-mill boat built down to a price, not up to a craftsman-crafted spec?

Yet ever so soon there I was aboard a Jeanneau Sun Odyssey 45. It was indeed quite white, but immaculate, spacious, very well-equipped, and recently returned from the ARC (Atlantic Rally for Cruisers). So I began a sensible, realistic search for my very first yacht.

I happened upon a Sun Odyssey 45DS that seemed to tick a lot of my boxes and sported alluring, flowing lines. So this was the model. Finally, a five-year-old 45DS in Croatia seemed the most attractive, not least because it was the two-cabin version with a vast ensuite owner’s cabin, powered winches, air-con and a hydraulic passerelle. I chose a surveyor and flew out to Pula with him.

The survey was encouraging, despite quite a list of all that needed rectifying, including details like a broken hinge on a shower screen. I phoned the Jeanneau agent to check that a replacement hinge was available. Yes, it was.

‘How much is that?’ I enquired. ‘That’s £45.’

‘No, I don’t want a box of hinges, just the one, thanks.’

‘Yes, that is the price for one.’

Perhaps that shock should have steered me away from boat ownership, but even with a fixed pension I still believed in the elasticity of money. So I forged ahead to the haggling phase, and negotiated a deal at €159k. She was mine! In honour of my long-suffering wife, so prudently and adamantly opposed to boat-owning, we named her Lady J.

Now the refit. Another €10k gone, in a flash, with a grimace! Then the essential purchases. On and on they went, to the point where practicalities were overwhelming and a luxury became an essential. So a TV with a DVD player! And that required an inverter – more money.

A cold shower

With the costs of purchase, refit and essentials now tucked neatly away in a cerebral backwater where they could languish till they sank into oblivion, I was naively convinced that the money-tree would not need to blossom again for several seasons. The old adage about boat ownership resembling a cold shower beneath which you tear up bundles of £20 notes could not possibly be true. Or was that broken hinge a harbinger of many a cold shower?

At the end of June we flew to Pula.

The refit was complete and Lady J was sparkling (whitely!). Plain sailing from now on? Sailing with hiccups more accurately. The initial day’s voyage started ominously. The genoa would not unfurl, the main jammed, I motored over the dinghy. Once we managed to get underway, the log showed we were sailing at 13 knots. Wow! But was that somewhat beyond my modest capabilities? It soon dawned on me that recalibration was required.

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The broker’s suggested anchorage for our first night proved unattractive, so we ended up in a marina – more money. But our young Croatian neighbours, all with excellent English, plied us with gin, and volubly entertained us. The joys of random encounters which the sailing life affords! Money be damned! And the longer we sailed, the more we delighted in such chance encounters with folk of so many nationalities and personalities.

Carefree sailing

Finally the much-anticipated, carefree, sun-drenched, island-hopping, seafood-gorging, rosé-quaffing life was ours, an idyll only occasionally interrupted by odd moments of drama, or idiocy. Molat, Zirje, Hvar – even the exotic names of these islands were thrilling.

Our daughter and friends flew out to join us. So berthings were less fraught. But money continued to flow. The much-patched dinghy was beyond repair. The outboard engine, which we had omitted to service, wouldn’t start. The chartplotter went on the blink. We were tying up too often in marinas. Three nights in Dubrovnik was another €350! But Dubrovnik delighted.

Then Montenegro, flooded with Russian money, and after four nights in Porto Montenegro, flooded with ours as well. But impressive UNESCO World Heritage sites such as Kotor and Perast, and a visit to Our Lady of the Rocks, a beautiful church which took several hundred years to build, provided indelible memories. What’s money, anyway?

On to Albania, with some trepidation, heading for the post-communist unknown. Then to Greece. Greece of the luminous light, the vivid bougainvillea, the freshly caught fish, the multitude of varied village harbours, the ever-welcoming Greek people, the enchanting little chapels, the idyllic anchorages affording heavenly turquoise swimming, the walks through ancient olive groves, trees so old and gnarled that they resembled Tolkien’s ‘Ents’.

We travelled down the Ionian from Erikoussa, to Corfu, Paxos, Preveza, Levkas, Meganisi, Ithaca, then back north to Gouvia for a flight home for our son’s wedding. The boat spent eight nights in the marina resulting in another deluge of euros disappearing down the shower drain! At the end of the season, we travelled across the sole of Italy, to Sicily, and finally to Malta, my wife’s home country, for the winter lay-up.

An epiphany

At the end of this first season, I was forced to confront the annual costs.Temporarily blind St Paul knew all about scales falling from eyes. Now, and over the ensuing years, the scales fell from mine, slowly at first, cascading by the end. This increasing clarity of vision afforded a rather disquieting view.

The route ahead looked expensive. It was: sail repairs, a new anchor / anchor types and chain, new batteries, solar power panels, a new outboard, new halyards, a new mainsail, new genoa sheets, new mainsail furler, new standing rigging, not to mention the antifouling, the diesel, the haul-out and launching fees, the berthing fees, the yard over-wintering fees. Ouch, ouch and ouch again! That cold shower was now icy, and those torn-up £20s had become shredded £50s.

Money be damned? Yes, what is money but figures on a bank statement? If red figures mean long summers of exploration, of exhilaration, of joy, of a blessed genoa-billowing wind inspiring the Lady to sing in tune with the heavens, or warm zephyrs caressing one in the cockpit of a sundowning evening, and the ever-joyful rocking to sleep on a well-set hook, then yes, let the overdraft look after itself!

The following season we spent exploring Sicily, and were joined in San Vito lo Capo by our son and his wife for a fortnight, then by friends for another ten days. We sailed round the Egadi islands to the west, then the Aeolian islands to the north – a volcanic archipelago that smells strongly of sulphur – before heading south through the Messina straits.

Next was Taormina, and a trip up Etna which throughout our time on Sicily’s east coast produced a magnificently incandescent lava flow with accompanying fireworks. Anchored off Taormina, and dining ashore, Etna deposited ash in our wine, and a violent wind tore the bimini from its frame. Money, money, money!

Siracuse provided the perfect antidote to our stress, with its baroque central square the undoubted showpiece, doubly so after dark, when a wedding party may emerge from the cathedral, and children dance and play until late at night.

Next season

The next season we invited good friends to join us from the outset. John, with whom I had attended a Day Skipper theory course 30 years earlier, had become, in retirement, a delivery skipper. So who better to accompany us on a direct crossing from Malta to Kefalonia, a 50-hour passage, than John and his wife?

Dolphins accompanied us, too, on several occasions. The night passages we took allowed us to immerse ourselves in soul-stirring sunsets, and to delight as never before in that great orb rising again across a boundless sea.

We spent two nights recovering in Argostoli, then onwards to Poros where we enjoyed a superb meal in the Family Fotis Taverna, where the ‘Krisis’ menu of three sumptuous courses and wine was a mere €10 a head. This was the Greece of massive state debt and austerity.

We had breakfast in another excellent taverna, its courtyard bedecked with enormous freshly-caught octopus stretched out to dry, which the chef explained enhances the grilling of them. Then south to Zakynthos, whose southern end is the breeding-ground of the loggerhead species of turtle, and unfortunately the stomping-ground of the less attractive species of British merry-maker.

Yet Zakynthos town is also home to one of the Ionian’s most beautiful churches, Panagia Faneromeni, which had been almost completely destroyed in the earthquake of 1953, then lovingly reconstructed and restored to its original splendour.

We headed slowly up to Meganisi, on very low revs on a windless day, anxious about the apocalyptic reports that Greece might run out of diesel if the ‘Grexit’ crisis escalated and the country withdrew from the euro. Money troubles were everywhere, but in this context our private indebtedness and profligate spending seemed suddenly trifling!

Our next stop was Vathi on Ithaka, birthplace not only of Odysseus, but also of St Raphael, and we arrived to witness the celebratory procession of his life and martyrdom by the America’s Cup Turks. Greek Orthodox priests are magnificently attired, and also engage fully in local life.

On later crossings back and forth from Malta, it was just the two of us – one asleep on the cockpit bench, one on watch, straining desperately, much-coffeed, to stay awake, to make meaning of those rapidly approaching lights.

Squid games

We woke one morning at daybreak to find the coachroof sporting large, black smears. Oil? Tar? From where? It was a mystery, until I found several dead culprits on the sidedeck. Clearly last night’s lumpy sea had washed a shoal of squid on board, only for a later wave to wash most of them away, but not before they had liberally squirted their ink.

We also experienced a prolonged thunderstorm through the night, waking to discover the radar reflector on the deck and, on inspection aloft, the cap shroud welded to the top spreader. Storms also shrouded several of our anchorages, with cold, drenched skippers in the cockpit or at the windlass, letting out more and more chain.

Covid blighted the summer of 2020, but, with so many suffering so horribly, the missing of a season’s sailing could hardly be considered any sort of suffering in comparison. And, of course, the money tree barely had to blossom, let alone fruit!

It was blissful to get back on the water in 2021, but the years have rolled on and the expenses have never diminished. Our daughter is getting wed, and needs help with a deposit on a first property. Added to which, my magnanimous wife is decreasingly amenable to spending whole summers away from home and our grandchildren.

At the end of the season, therefore, Lady J goes on the market. She sells quickly, at a good price, and we are left with the memories, and a comforting comment in the survey: ‘Her current owner has maintained her to a very high standard.’

So farewell, lovely Lady! There are those who say that the two most blissful moments of yacht ownership are the day you buy and the day you sell. How wrong they are! The day you sell, you are adrift, rudderless, becalmed – truly bereft. How do you recover? By dreaming again, of course!

There’s no fool like an old fool, they say. Who knows but at 75, I will somehow contrive that final fling, that last hurrah? Who knows what lies unseen, unknown, just over the horizon?

Lessons learned

Keep your dreams alive – Never give up on your dreams, however long they may take to come to fruition. It was Garcia Marquez who said: ‘It’s not true that people stop pursuing dreams because they grow old, they grow old because they stop pursuing dreams.’

Big isn’t always best – At 6ft 4in, headroom was a major consideration for me, so I was lured towards a biggish yacht; that also allowed us to entertain family and friends in real comfort. But in hindsight I discovered that decent headroom is available on smaller yachts. Such a choice would have reduced the capital cost enormously.

Be budget savvy – Don’t underestimate the continuing costs of boat ownership, particularly as the boat ages. Keep meticulous accounts; they help to keep you grounded and to plan ahead. Learn to anticipate at least one unexpected four-figure expenditure every year. When do your insurers demand that you replace the standing rigging? That is a very substantial expense. How old are the sails, and in what condition? Then plan ahead for sail replacement, another major expense.

Drop the hook in harbours – Avoid marinas if you possibly can. Village harbours are much cheaper, and generally more attractive. Peaceful anchorages are free and truly blissful.

Prepare for the night sails – Passages involving one or more nights at sea demand careful planning, a stock of spares, checks of radar and navigation apps and weather forecasts. Moonlit nights are safer and so enjoyable. Ideally, have a minimum crew of four: two-man watches are far less perilous than solo watches, given the body’s insistent demands that you nod off.

Be ready for storms – Ensure your chain locker contains more than the normally needed length of chain. In a major storm you may need to let out much more than you would normally at anchor. We always used the oven as a Faraday cage, putting all movable electrical items in it.

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