THREE STEPS TO HEAVEN

How a brief holiday RIB rental led from an RYA training course to a share of a Med-based Princess 61 in three short steps

- Neil

Watching Howard’s Way on a Sunday evening as a teenager, I always saw boating as a pastime of the super wealthy, but I loved the sea and wanted in. My route to the water was meant to be the Royal Navy when I was 16 but after narrowly failing my final exam to become an engineer and being too impatient to wait the full year before being able to resit it, I ended up with a career in IT. My access to the sea was limited to occasional sailing or fishing trips with friends and family. Owning my own boat didn’t seem like something I would ever be able to afford.

Fast forward to June 2017 and I was with my girlfriend (now wife) in Malta in a hotel overlooking the marina. Tina shared a mutual love of the sea and talked me into renting a small RIB for the day. It was glorious, especially when a local boat came into the bay selling fresh Italian ice creams! A birthday trip to Monaco only stoked our boating desires as we gazed longingly at the superyachts in the harbour. Perhaps if we started small? 

STEP 1 : THE TRAINING COURSE 

As a first tentative step, Tina booked us onto an RYA Day Skipper course in Plymouth. After passing the theory and practical, we headed to the London boat show determined to find a way onto the water. Having fallen in love with the early 1980s twin-engine, displacement cruiser we trained on for our Day Skipper course, we were looking for a modest semi-displacement motor cruiser. Unfortunately, there was nothing similar within our limited budget. Just as we were about to leave the show, we stumbled across a stand for a boat club called Pure Latitude, promising “All the enjoyment of owning a boat with none of the responsibility.”