A STEEP LEARNING CURVE

Lifelong sailors Cas and Dave Peace cast aside their prejudice and take the first tentative steps towards a new life afloat in the warmth and comfort of their first proper motor boat

- Dave Peace

We are Cas and Dave, a pair of married sea shanty and folk singers who just love messing around on the water. Over the 30-plus years we have been together, we have been lucky enough to own a wide variety of boats from one-man sailing dinghies to narrowboats, but for the last 10 years we have been committed sailors, crewing for a friend then buying our own Mystery 35 sailing yacht.

Recently, though, Cas started to find sailing a bit much, especially the leaning over bit. Initially, we resolved this by sticking to motoring and only going out on calm days but the addition of two crazy lurcher-type dogs to our family, on top of our three grown-up children and seven granddaughters, meant space was also at a premium. So over the last few years, as we both increased in age and decreased in physical capability, we began thinking the unthinkable changing sail for power.

SAIL OR POWER?

Sailing is huge fun but often rather frustrating, especially when you want to get somewhere and the weather means you don’t or can’t. We have always wanted to undertake longer trips around the UK; the Scottish Isles and parts of Ireland – perhaps a grand tour over to Norway via Holland and the canals, not forgetting northern France and Brittany either. Was now the time to reconsider our boating and change to power?