...why we are liveaboard cruisers.
"It takes guts in uncertain mid-life to unscrew the jar, trouser the pennies, rent out the house, flout family expectations and Money Box Live and the risk of I-told-you-so’s from envious Steady Eddies; to do like Paul and Rachel Chandler and road-test your dream.
Thirty years ago it would be inconceivable outside a sitcom, that two grey-heads in prudent professions — a quantity surveyor and an economist — would desert quintessentially square Tunbridge Wells for a life on the open sea"
"Reading the Chandler’s blog of their three-year voyage, it is thrilling to realise what happiness might lie ahead when one is untethered from work, family or nation. Mr Chandler’s face as he fiddles with his engine bears the beam of a man truly alive. Unlike the moany expats who hole up in remote châteaux and Brookside villas, stewing their boredom in all-day vino, looking out alone, unvisited, unbefriended, upon their perfect view, the Chandler’s grabbed the globe and spun it with glee.
Instead of soul-deadening idleness, they chose a life of perpetual challenges, both major (crossing treacherous waters) and minor (how to sleep during a monsoon). They celebrate their self-sufficiency and resourcefulness, their route calculations, new friends and small triumphs; Rachel pens a cheery photo-story of how she scrubbed and dried their dirty sails. They step ashore with curiosity and boundless amusement. As Bruce Chatwin observed in The Songlines, Man, a nomadic beast, is never more content than when in motion."
Read the whole piece in The Times
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/com...cle6897359.ece
This journalist gets it...
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