The start ...
To start at the beginning, as my dear reader may recall, I left my job at BP at the beginning of the year and set up Peckett Marine to provide electrical and electronic engineering services to fellow yachties and motorboaters.
That has gone rather better than expected already with a steady flow of work coming in despite not having advertised or marketed my services in any significant way. Bodes well for the future.
A chore that has to be done ...
Step two in the cunning plan is to tidy up our house and garden, slap a bit of trade magnolia on the walls, replace the worn out carpets with something tidy and cheap and sell the place as soon as possible. The house is bigger than we now need and the garden is way too big. Lovely productive garden (we used to grow virtually all our own veg and a lot of fruit) but it takes time and effort to maintain and since we bought our first boat (Brigantia) it's got away from us and is now a sea of weeds!
A foothold in the property market ...
Step three is to purchase a flat in Kettering with our eldest son who currently lodges with us. Without going into too much personal detail, we'll buy our share of the flat from part of the equity released from the house sale, he'll buy his share with a mortgage.
The flat will give us a number of advantages.
Firstly we will have a legitimate legal residence. This avoids any risk of becoming "of no fixed abode" which is what happens to liveaboards without a legal residence. It's a very problematic status to end up with, you struggle to get access to all sorts of services including doctors, dentists, etc. and even benefits can be problematic if you fall on hard times.
A further advantage of having a legal residence ashore (however much or little time we actually spend there) is that we will not be residential boaters. We will be living aboard our boat most of the time (more on that below) but as long as the boat can, and does, move under her own steam and spends some reasonable period of time off her mooring every year there's no issue with the planning people and so on. (There's a subtle but crucial difference between living aboard your cruising boat and being a residential boat)
A second advantage of the flat is that temporary work is readily available in the Kettering area. If the pennies are getting a bit short and work is a bit thin, one or both of us can jump ship and use the flat as a base to get work to top up the coffers. And of course the flat will give us a base for visits "home" to see family.
A further crucial function of the flat is to give Jane the security of somewhere to live if anything should happen to me. We're not getting any younger and I've been a heavy smoker since my mid-teens until quite recently (and latterly I've slipped into a bit of a cigar habit which is not good) so we have to face the fact that I could turn up my toes at a relatively young age. That, without the flat, would leave Jane stuck on board a boat on her own with no transport (she doesn't, and now never will, drive). Not good.
A bigger boat ...
Step 3(ish) may come before, during or after step 4. And it's a happy / sad step. The reality is that much as we love Erbas and as suitable as she is for holiday cruising, she just doesn't have the space or the facilities to be used as a live-aboard. For the summer months alone, we could manage but not through the winter
The reason it's step 3(ish) is that the timing of when we exchange Erbas for something bigger is not set in stone. We will start looking as soon as we've sold the house and bought the flat but we'll be in no rush. I'll come to what we'll be looking for in a minute ...
Money ...
Step 4 will be to accumulate a decent reserve of money in the bank. Or ISAs or whatever. It's likely that Jane will carry on working for Morrisons for at least a year, perhaps two, whilst I concentrate on establishing Peckett Marine to the point where we're confident about our income levels and reserves and we've got the right boat for the future.
When the time is right, Jane will "retire" and move on board. Of course, if the opportunity to get work within reach of Fambridge by public transport comes up she might be able to make the move sooner.
Although the failure of my IT business some years ago set us back badly financially, we've still got a healthy chunk of equity in the house despite still having a significant mortgage (we'd be mortgage free by now if things had not gone pear shaped). That should provide ample capital to purchase the flat and a bigger boat with something left over for a rainy day.
With much lower outgoings, we won't need a fortune to live comfortably. I'm fairly sure that I can earn enough to keep us in bread and baked beans at least!
The dream ...
The ultimate goal is to be able to take two or three months off during the summer months and go extended cruising. Oh and I ought to mention that the reason I've gone quiet about the plan to sail around Britain next year or the year after is that we've decided to wait until we can do that trip together.
We've no plans to go across oceans but we want to be able to explore the coast of Britain, visit Ireland, and go seek out some furrin' parts actually worth the effort of visiting! (It can't all be boring!!!!)
The boat ...
I know, I keep posting on this topic from time to time. But it does require some thinking about and writing down our current thinking is very useful both at the time and for future reference.
First and foremost, whatever we buy has to be a genuine sailing vessel. It doesn't have to be fast, it certainly doesn't have to be a world girdling blue water cruiser but it has to be capable of making serious coastal and offshore (in suitable weather) passages under sail.
The next requirement is where it gets tricky. The accommodation has to work for us. That means it needs ...
- A double cabin with a comfortable bed and good stowage. Ideally the master cabin will have somewhere to sit comfortably so it can be used as a private lounge (particularly for Jane to get some "me" time watching her favourite telly programmes)
- A 'U' or 'L' shaped galley off to one side of the companionway. We both dislike linear galleys.
- A comfortable saloon with lounging space for two. Boats that only have a dinnette or 'U' shaped settee without enough length to stretch out on are not likely to find favour.
- Space to install a solid fuel / wood burning stove. There's nothing better for heating a boat in the winter than a proper stove.
- A heads and shower compartment of adequate size. A shower on board is a must. We cope without it on Erbas OK and happily at Fambridge the marina showers are very much to our liking but I struggle with the lack of space in most marina showers because I absolutely have to be able to sit down to dry off and get dressed (due to my dodgy knee)
- A guest cabin. It can be a single, a double or two singles but it has to be behind a door from the main accommodation and have room to stand up and get dressed. The berth itself could be a quarter berth or a v-berth or whatever.
- And I'd like a proper nav table at which I can sit comfortably which will double as an office area
On deck, we're really not bothered about whether it's centre cockpit or aft cockpit. I'd rather like an inside steering position for use in inclement weather but not at the cost of a proper helming position on deck when sailing. That pretty much rules out most of the typical motor-sailers.
And whatever she is, she must be able to take the ground upright in a mud berth (more on that below)
The final kicker is that she ideally needs to have character. Erbas has character. She's a pretty boat to start with and her unique interior and the years of loving care lavished on her by the two previous owners (which we're doing our best to keep up!) has resulted in a boat that has real pontoon appeal. She gets lots of admiring comments from passers by which is. I will confess, something of an ego trip :)
Finding a boat that ticks all the boxes and has bags of character is not going to be easy. Especially not with a budget of between £20k and £40k
We may have to sacrifice the character. I've previously posted about the Southerly 115 Mk.1 which is an example of a boat that would do everything we want the next boat to do. In fact, with the exception of the space for a stove, the 115 hits every nail on the head. And maybe, just maybe, our budget might stretch far enough. But with the best will in the world, it's not a character boat.
We shall see
The mud again ...
As the avid reader will know, we've moved Erbas onto a mud berth at Fambridge Yacht Station. It's a trial run at the moment, we haven't made a decision on whether to apply for a permanent mud berth but it's looking promising.
Long term, unless we were enticed away by an irresistible offer elsewhere, I can't see us quitting Fambridge any time soon. Assuming there isn't a drastic change in the way the place is run Fambridge suits us very well and it's ideal for my new line of work.
If we ever did move elsewhere, mud berths are always substantially cheaper than marina berths.
So there we are, that's the shape of the future (we hope!)
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