Moving on…
Exiting Exeat
Someone once told me that the perfect boat was always 4 ft bigger than your current one. Perhaps it’s the same with houses, just on a larger scale. You gradually expand to fit the space you inhabit, and after a while, you find you’ve filled every cupboard, drawer and locker until they’re overflowing and you think to yourself, if only we had another 4 foot/room…
And so, after four seasons of living on board Exeat for six months of the year, we’ve found ourselves a bigger version of her. Literally: it’s the same make (a Jeanneau Sun Odyssey for any sailors reading this), but 49 ft instead of Exeat’s 45. And she in turn has been snapped up by a family in Portsmouth, who are upgrading from their 37 ft sailboat. We’ve spent the past few weeks removing any evidence of us from our floating home, which has involved an unbelievable number of bags and trips from boat to store and back again…how on earth did I cram so much into a 45 ft monohull?
Meanwhile our new (to us) boat is based in Italy, waiting for a delivery crew to fly out and sail her back to the UK. It’s a slightly nerve-wracking time - in an entirely first world problems sense - as we iron out the final legalities with the sellers, and try and plan for her 3000 mile passage through the Med, up the Spanish coast to Biscay and then across the English Channel to her new home on the Isle of Wight. We shall be holding our breath as she sails through orca-alley along the Portuguese coast, where since 2020 there have been over 600 incidents recorded of orcas attacking sailing boats - ramming and biting their rudders, and sinking seven boats. (If you want to know more about this, the BBC has a good article here about the suspected origins of this behaviour by 15 Iberian orcas).
Despite the terrifying prospect of encountering boat-sinking killer whales, I’m sorry to be missing out on the experience of sailing her from Italy to the IOW. But the insurance company demands a professional delivery company do the job, who have made it politely plain that they’d rather not have the owners on board! That said, Jerry has persuaded them to let him join in the first leg through the Med; then they’ll turf him out at Sicily to fly home.
Presuming she makes it to English waters unscathed, our first mission as her new owners will be to conduct a naming ceremony: the sellers want to keep her name and logo, so we will have to re-brand her. Exeat 2?
