A blessing in disguise

I am originally from the north-east of England but spent 13 years working for the Bermuda government and living on the island. I had owned a 17ft sailing boat for a few years in the highlands of Scotland before we moved, but once my wife and I had settled into our new lives on Bermuda my thoughts soon turned to getting a boat that I could sail around and about the islands, weekending, occasional day trips out into the Atlantic, and perhaps one day even further afield.

So I bought Garouda, a 1968 31ft Van de Stadt (Tyler Harmony in UK) from a French doctor who had been heading for an extended single-handed cruise to the Pacific and Indonesia, but had changed his mind and was returning to France.

was pretty well equipped for her originally intended voyage, but our next few years were spent sailing. I made several sailing trips to the USA and the Caribbean during this time but always as crew.