SO. Here we are, a couple living, currently, on the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland, with the dream of buying a boat and sailing off into the sunset.
Sadly, Dad passed away suddenly a couple of years back, and his passing, along with some other occurrences with close family, has shown us that whilst we could wait for our retirement to head off down this road, in order to enjoy the journey with the ones we love, we need to look at this sooner rather than later. Because we’ve seen that the road can take unexpected twists and turns.
We’re reasonably experienced sailors. I’m an RYA Senior Dinghy Instructor, with a long history of inshore and offshore racing in a variety of dinghies, day-boats, and larger yachts. Herself has a day skipper theory (technically outranking me in ‘official offshore qualifications’) and helps me run the Stornoway Sailing Club.
We own a small cruising yacht, a Thompson T24, now celebrating its 50th birthday in its berth in Stornoway Marina, but being only 24 feet (7.32m) long, we’re limited to shorter distances. We’d like to be able to go further afield in the time we have available to us, so we’ve been looking for something a bit bigger – say around 40 feet (12.2m) – which has a higher hull speed.