How we came to live on a boat

November 2019

We were fairly late starters and sailing took over our lives in our early 40's.  Steve and I set out one day to buy a Harley Davidson with thoughts of riding off in the sunset at weekends as our kids were getting older and less dependent on us.

The Harley turned into a Victoria 30 called Lively Gypsy pictured here and we had great fun on what was a beautifully constructed boat.  I remember one of the children saying to us once 'you're never here, do you realise you've been away for 17 weekends on the trot'.  No we hadn't realised but as the seasons went on we did realise that this was something we could do full-time, live on a boat and sail the world.

In July 2007 our plan was to put the house on the market in April 2008 giving us enough time to do some repairs that were needed in order sell it.  Once the decision was made it was the 'how are we going make it happen?'.

As fate would have it in August 2007 at the height of the then housing boom someone put a handwritten postcard through our door that said......WE WANT TO BUY YOUR HOUSE.  Well, for those of you who know me you'll also know that I am very spontaneous and without a single thought as to how, what, where or why I called the person on the postcard.  Thirty minutes later a couple came to our front door walked directly passed us to the back of the house, looked out the window, which by the way looked over the Itchen River and a lot of Southampton UK, and asked us 'How much do you want for it?'.  That was it, house sold.  We had a house full of stuff that had to be got rid of / sold or boxed up for storage.  The new buyers wanted us out of the house in 6 weeks!!

At that point we still had Lively Gypsy.  We put her up for sale to buy a bigger boat. We thought that by buying a larger boat it would encourage the children & our relatives to join us if and when they wanted.

Our dream boat at that time was a 42' Halberg Rassy.  However, whilst the house sale continued our dream boat didn't materialise.  We travelled for miles every weekend but every time we decided to make an offer someone beat us to it or on one occasion the boat was taken off the market.  We finally moved into Steve's parents house temporarily.

In November 2007 we were wandering around the Hamble Point Boatyard when we spotted Cordelia, a Venus 46 Ketch.  She was on the hard and looked so like a Halberg Rassy that we decided to get onboard, even though there was no sales person about.

We fell in love instantly, she had to be ours (subject to survey of course), we had at last found our dream boat.  The purchase completed mid November following a sea trial and full survey.

Just before Christmas 2007 we moved onto Cordelia on the hard at Hamble Point in freezing cold conditions with no heating but we were ecstatic.  She was ours, paid for and most importantly the initial part of our dream had been achieved 🙋.

Winter berthing at Alcaidesa Marina, La Linea

Oct 2019

Having made the decision to spend 2020 in the Mediterranean  we needed to find a winter berth for approx. 6 months.  We also decided it meant we could travel back to the UK and visit the family so our berth had to be near an airport - La Linea it was as it is so near Gibraltar and the daily berth fitted in with our daily budget too.

We sailed into the Gibraltar Straits with a pod of huge dolphins, the first we had seen since turning into The Algarve several weeks ago.  It was amazing.

We were lucky to get an outer finger berth at the marina, which means there is not a lot of walkers past the boat all the time.  The marina is only 500mtrs from the Gibraltar boarder, very large and accommodates a lot of boats getting prepared for their passage across the Atlantic.  It feels quite strange watching them preparing their boats because this is something that we would have been doing if were going this year, but this will be us in 12mths.  There are boats coming and going every day and a lot of them.

La Linea marina offers specials deals to catamaran's and there are a lot of them here.  Some people stay a while and some only overnight.

There is a set of container like homes as seen in the photo here that you are able to rent for about €100 per night and although very new they seem to be very busy.


We are using our bikes a lot to go shopping and site-see.  There are a lot of bike paths so it feels safe, especially after not riding a bike for 40yrs lol!  There is not a lot to do in La Linea and parts of it are quite run-down, however with a weekly market, being very near Gibraltar, a lovely beach and plenty of cycle paths, I think we will be fine until next year.

We have loads of jobs to finish before April next year and these need to be completed so that we don't have to go into a marina for water or food.  We will also need the water maker & freezer before we head for the Caribbean autumn 2020.

We returned to the UK in mid October for 2 wks and had a great time staying with Katrina in Southampton and Michael in Wattisham.  It was a great time to go as October half term meant we got to spend time with all the grandkiddies but boy did it feel compared to Spain.

I know leaving them all in the UK will be heart-breaking but all our children have said they will visit us next year somewhere in the Med, so we are really looking forward to that.