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Intrepid novice skipper Monty Halls takes his family sailing along the south coast of Devon and Cornwall to the Isles of Scilly and back
Being poked in the cheek and asked ‘Is this annoying? Is this annoying? Is this annoying?’ by my bored 11-year-old daughter Isla was indeed annoying. But what made it even more irritating was the fact that, as she did so, I was watching Sobek – our Colvic 34 which happened to be sitting on a buoy in the midst of Storm Betty – edge ever closer to the geo-fence pictured on the screen inches from my aghast face.
Having dealt with one issue by informing Isla at considerable volume that, yes, it was rather annoying, I then used all of my vast (10 months’) sailing experience to deal with the other. By now the wind was gusting Force 9, and according to the screen we were shortly to end up on a nearby reef here in the Scillies, whereupon Sobek would begin to vigorously disassemble herself. So I did what I normally do in situations of sailing-related peril – I texted Justin, Sobek’s previous owner who was nearby in his own vessel, Thistledown. A man of vast experience and glacial calm, he informed me in clipped tones that the wind had simply veered a tad, I’d set the geo-fence too close to the mooring, and the same thing had just happened to him.
‘Reset it, nothing to worry about, and enjoy the evening,’ was his curt response. He didn’t sound resigned exactly, but if either of us had known how to put a ‘sigh’ emoji on the message (we’re both of a certain age, and indeed a grammatically correct inclination) then we would have done so. Fair enough, I’d been harassing him ever since I’d bought the boat, to the point that he was now accompanying me on this – the Generation Sea Change project – just to keep a close eye on proceedings.
BLOWING THE BUDGET
I had purchased Sobek a year previously. Having decided to venture into the world of sailing, I set a very strict price limit of £27,000 as that’s what we could just about rustle together without breaking the bank. The subsequent conversation with my wife, Tam, in which I informed her that I had not only found the vessel of my dreams, but that I had actually shaken hands on the £40K or so required to buy it was not met with a rueful shake of the head and a ‘It’s precisely that sort of financial spontaneity that attracted me to you in the first place, you loveable rogue,’ comment. Instead there was a short period of silence, and I thought some rather unnecessary and passive-aggressive clattering of pans that evening as we all sat down to dinner.
But she was a beautiful boat, with a touch of elegance and grandeur but also a bit of a pot belly akin
