BUYING A NEW BOAT & EQUIPPING FOR THE MED

After selling their business and retiring in March 2021, Mike and Debbie Morgan set about choosing, buying and upgrading a boat with all the bells and whistles to cruise around the Mediterranean in maximum comfort

- MIKE MORGAN

MIKE MORGAN Mike and his wife Debbie Morgan first started sailing in the Solent in 2009 in a Jaguar 27. They upgraded their boats over the years and have cruised a Beneteau Sense 46 in the Mediterranean for the past three years. When Mike turned 60 in 2020, they decided to sell their business and cruise the Mediterranean. They allocated part of the proceeds from the sale to fulfill their retirement ambitions and purchased a new boat and equipped it for extensive cruising. They have three daughters who all have busy careers but still spend their summer vacations enjoying sailing with their parents. www.morganslife.co.uk

Our dream of owning a boat and cruising the Mediterranean could finally become reality. Now we just needed to turn fantasy into fact. Our new boat needed to be a home-from-home which could take us around the Mediterranean in comfort and safety, could easily be handled by two and had the potential of going further afield. We both agreed that we wanted something larger than our previous boat, a Beneteau Sense 46, as we planned to be spending up to eight months a year onboard. Therefore, we were looking for a boat in the 50-foot-plus range with a minimum of three cabins.

Firstly, we did some simple maths. For the past three years we have been spending three months each a year sailing around the Mediterranean and did approximately 1,000 to 1,500 miles per season. By calculating the average boat speed of 6 knots this meant we were at anchor approximately 90% of the time.

Given the amount of time on the hook, we wanted our new boat to offer a large outside socialising space to enjoy our surroundings. Our budget limited us to a production rather than a custom boat. We were already fans of the apartment look of modern boats using light-colour woods, soft-closing drawers, settees you can stretch out on and a pop-up TV that appears at the touch of a button.