Restoring Andromeda

Clive Robertson swaps a London media career for four years in a boatyard and restores a wooden gaffer from scratch

- Clive Robertson

It was October 2015, I was 30 years old, and dreaming of sailing the world someday, perhaps even owning a gaffer of my own. I had £300 of savings, which certainly was a start towards a £25,000 smack but, realistically, I was still a long way off.

On this particular evening I sat on a packed train travelling out of London. Around me people read newspapers, balancing their work bag on their lap, eating fast food or just staring out of the window. It felt like the thousandth time I’d made this monotonous commute.

By weekday, I was a media producer, by weekend, a sailor. For years I balanced this compromise, the prospect of ‘climbing the ladder’ versus being on the river in East Anglia, something I wasn’t willing to let go of.

At the time, I owned a 22ft fin keel cabin cruiser, kept in Holbrook Creek on the River Stour, but with very little funds available after the £750 monthly commute and no maintenance facilities in Holbrook Creek, Spindrift was getting worse for wear.

As the sound of the train clattering along the tracks brought me back to the present day, I realised that, although I absolutely loved what I did for a job, this had to be time for a change. The two-hour daily commute by car, bike and train was not sustainable and, 10 years into working life, I was making no progress towards a buying a smack.

While I weighed up the limited options available, it occurred to me that schools have the whole summer off to go sailing as well as having a laying-up holiday in October, maintenance holidays in December and February and a fitting-out holiday in Easter before the shakedown cruise holiday in May.