5. Sell Up First

We started the process by selling Di’s business first, this came as a bit of a blow to her as she’d done so well setting it up. She sold her prize Chinese Military Jeep to fund the opening and she’d worked hard to make it work but as it was not the golden goose, financial sense said it had to go first.
The salon was situated in the Gloucester Leisure Centre so there was no real value in the lease, just the equipment and goodwill. We decided to make a clean break and simply handed in the keys to a very amused management.
“You mean you’re giving all this up to go and live on a boat Diana?”
“Yes but at least we’ll be sailing around the world on it” she promptly replied.
“Oh. In that case, good luck to you. Can I come too?”
We sold most of the salon equipment but not before it was first of all stored at the house, I’d still love to know what the nosey neighbours thought of us, after seeing massage couches and equipment coming in and out of the tiny house all day.

The agent I’d hired contacted me to say he had a potential buyer for the club, so the timing appeared to be in our favour. I met up with the guy in a pub that he was running. It turned out that he’d split up with his wife who had gone on to buy a similar but not as busy club and I think he wanted mine just to thumb his nose at her.
I didn’t care why he wanted it as long as he had the funds.
We sat for hours discussing the price and when asked why I wanted to sell it I told him of our plans to sell up and sail and his eyes lit up even more. “Wow that’s exactly what I plan do in the future”, he informed me. “Well it worked for me,” I said, “so no doubt it would work for you, the club is a little gold mine.”
We made plans to get our solicitors together on the deal and I left his bar a very happy boy, the plan was definitely taking shape.

The next step was to sell the house, a very simple thing to do as it was at a time when the tax for single people was reduced for first time house buyers. Our neighbours had sold their house the previous month, so I rang the same agent they had dealt with and asked if there had been any other enquiries. The agent told me there had been quite a few and he would phone back soon.
As it was coming up to April I knew that it was going to be easy.

The money we made on the house would go as a deposit for the boat, with the final payment coming from the sale of the club within the next couple of months. The rest would go into an offshore bank account and voila we had it made.
Within a day I had a buyer for the house and we set a date to move out, starting to sell everything we owned through news paper adverts, car boot sales or simply giving it to friends.
The car boot sales were fun but at the same time it was strange to be offered a fraction of the price we had paid for our things. We would get up with the birds and drive off to little Cotswold villages and towns and set up our stands. The Chinese table lamps with silk shades wouldn’t really go on the boat but surely they were worth - “Fifty pence each mate, take it or leave it.” Things that we’d scoured antique fairs for went at a fraction of the price we had paid for them. Unfortunately we couldn’t allow ourselves the luxury of refusing offers as time was of the essence.
Our final sale was at Stroud where we sold most things quite quickly except for a pile of video tapes, people didn’t seem interested in our tastes, things like the whole day of Live Aid Concert religiously taped and carefully labelled. In the end I changed the labels on the last few tapes to Snow White pornographic version, Big Boobs of Bel Air and a few other choice titles that I laughingly dreamt up. Diana was beside herself, telling me off for being bad but sure enough the raincoat brigade soon got wind of it and the tapes went like hot cakes.
We ended up with a couple of large boxes that held our clothes kitchen equipment and little else.
We had already decided on what we could and couldn’t take with us. We knew we didn’t want to just sail away with nothing to do so we bought a pile of books, not just fiction but things we could re-educate ourselves with, sailing books and almanacs of course, cookery books, language books and tapes, a heavy duty sewing machine.
Diana equipped herself with a good camera and lenses. I wanted to further my musical education so I took two guitars a keyboard, drum machine and four track recording studio.
We had every intention of making this a journey of a lifetime and we didn’t want to go on the gin and tonic route and miss most of it.

Di was a bit sad to give up her cherished VW Sirocco but as I also sold my Golf Cabriolet she couldn’t really complain. I went out and bought an old Ford Escort estate car as our final runabout, not much compensation but a very practical purchase.
It’s strange how we go through life accumulating possessions never thinking of a day when we simply give them up.
Actually most of my childhood revolved around moving house every couple of years. I then joined the Army at fifteen and had lived in Germany for a few years returning to the UK with the proverbial suitcase and guitar in hand, so I was used to it. Di found it a little stranger than I did but then she came from a solid family who had lived in the same house for years.

Things were really starting to move in the right direction for us.
We booked another sailing course, this time with Westerly Sea School, a fitting conclusion to our sailing apprenticeship I thought. We timed it so we moved out of the house; straight into the course and straight after that we would pick up the yacht in Swansea.
We had deliberated for ages on a name for her. As my club was called the Prom I tried every combination around the name that was acceptable to the British Small Ships Register, PromOcean, InProm II and InPromtu but eventually we settled on what was really the only choice, Chamarel.

So in May that year we said goodbye to what had been our home for four years and sped off down the motorway to Port Talbot for our final sailing course.

I can honestly say I couldn’t fault the course at all. Peter our Skipper was a great instructor with a good sense of humour, the boat was well equipped and the food was superb, what more could you ask for. We didn’t sail too far but we learned a lot and came away with our latest certificates, Di a proud Day Skipper and me a Coastal Skipper.
The basis of which was that a Day Skipper was qualified to take out a medium sized yacht from a harbour and to return to the same harbour, whereas a Coastal Skipper could leave one harbour and go to another without going more than fifty miles offshore. Not exactly world girdling qualifications but you needed another 400 miles experience before you could take the next step to Yachtmaster Coastal.


So there it was that we arrived at Swansea dockyard on a Saturday afternoon in late May, full of excitement and pride to see Chamarel on the back of a huge low loader, all tied up like a huge Christmas present. We searched the yard for the driver of the truck but it turned out that he’d had no instruction to stay and had sauntered off home leaving us frustratingly clambering all over her but with no keys available to board her.
A frantic call to Steve the agent only confirmed that the driver had the keys with him and he wouldn’t return until the Monday.
Steve kindly arranged a small boat for us to stay on so we unloaded our worldly goods from the cramped car into the even more cramped boat and settled down to wait.
Not exactly the auspicious start that we’d dreamt of but at least Chamarel was in sight.

Monday couldn’t arrive fast enough.

We spent what was left of the weekend acquainting ourselves with our new surroundings; Swansea Yacht Haven without a yacht was not a Haven at all.Monday morning we sat patiently in the local café introducing ourselves to Viv the wonderful lady who ran the place. We were tucking into our breakfast when the driver arrived and we were finally given the keys. Breakfast abandoned we rushed over to her and reverently opened the hatch for the first time. We were knocked back by the stink of new fibreglass and varnish but undaunted we investigated her thoroughly before the yacht hoist trundled over and very soon Chamarel was unceremoniously plonked on the car park next to the shower block.