A NOVEL APPROACH

When Sarah Jasmon isn’t busy knocking up a new toilet or installing central heating, the busy liveaboard loves to write

- Sarah Jasmon

I didn’t grow up around boats. For a start, my hometown – Swindon – is about as far from the sea as you can get. As far as canals went, the Swindon branch of the Wilts and Berks had been filled in and built over decades before I came along. I’d never been on holiday on a boat or visited anyone on a boat. Call me unprepared but, by the time our wide beam was launched in 2005, I still hadn’t made it onboard a canal boat other than for a day of RYA training as an inland helmsman. I was about to face a big learning curve.

We’d first come across the idea of living on a boat some years earlier. It was in the early days of dial-up internet, and my then-husband’s parents called us up to ask if we could do some online research. They were thinking of selling their house and getting a boat. Could we have a look and send them the details? We were living in Eastbourne at the time, in a flat that had only recently been rebuilt after an extensive fire. Moving again wasn’t really on the cards but, as we watched pictures of boats slowly load on our computer screen, the idea of a canal-based life began to take root.

Fast-forward a few years. A severe case of the early-onset mid-life crisis had led to a re-evaluation of where we wanted to be. With our three children, then aged eight, four and one, we spent the best part of a year driving around Europe in a camper van. This was followed by a series of job-related moves around the country, followed by another campervan-based summer, this time in France. If we were going to keep moving, we thought, why not go back to that idea of a boat?