Cap'n Pugwash

Captain Pugwash and his mate

There is nothing unique or even particularly extraordinary in buying a sailing boat and going cruising. All you have to do is chuck the home, cars, family, pets (though some cruisers do manage to bring them along), and jobs as well as the attendant financial security they bring including regular medical checks and access to acceptable medical services, and of course, routine: television and newspapers, golf and football, bridge and bingo, theatre and cinema. Some things, like internet access, telephone and post, are available intermittently as and when you stop somewhere for long enough to find out where and how. Many cruisers have SSB (Single Side Band) radios from which email is available and the more wealthy ones have satellite phones which work everywhere, but at enormous cost.

As a way of life cruising is fabulous. I can’t recommend it highly enough. Apart from a vague plan to sail around the world (and avoiding seasonal hurricanes/cyclones) we had no schedule, no deadlines to meet. When ready we would just lift anchor and sail off to the next destination, which we may only have decided ten minutes earlier, and even then we’d sometimes change our minds about where to go whilst en route. We’d stop wherever and whenever we wanted. We visited all manner of exotic places - we’d tour the countryside, try the weird and wonderful local food, listen to their music and attempt to learn bits of the languages. We met so many new people, both locals and other cruisers. People in the cruising network come from incredibly varied backgrounds and are therefore a most interesting group. We made some excellent friends some of whom we bumped into again and again further on down the line, and we are still in contact with many of them today.

September 2001

“Let’s sell up, buy a boat and sail around the world.” Those were Mike’s first words, after a resounding ‘hello, I’m so pleased to see you again’ kiss when he returned from a three month crewing sojourn in the summer of 2001. He was promptly christened ‘Cap’n Pugwash’ by the locals in our pub, the one I’d carried on running whilst he was away.

It was in north Devon, the only pub in a small, very rural village. Good locals, mud and manure on their boots, straw in their hair, black and gap toothed smiles, fags hanging on lips from which fell words so strongly accented with West Country brogue and obscenities it took us some months to work out what they were saying. They didn’t care for us to begin with. “Bloody incomers,” they’d mutter, loud enough for us to hear, but we learned not to take offence as that same insult would be flung with equal venom at someone from the next county or even a neighbouring village. It took three years, but they got used to us and our strange foreign ways and I believe they were rather sad to see us go when we finally did that December, three months after Mike’s return.