Cowes, Isle of Wight

Bought here in Cowes: a 1999 Bavaria 42 in the three-cabin layout. Arrived in the evening after the handover, then slipped the mooring the very next morning — a bright, sunny Solent morning, the Royal Yacht Squadron’s cannon-lined lawn sliding past to starboard as the tide carried us out past the Shrapnel Islands — bound for Poole with the previous owner aboard for this first leg. Quiet this early in the season — Cowes Week and its crowds are still months off. The real work of getting to know her would start over the first days in Poole.

The plan for the stretch beyond that: work west along the south coast, cross the Channel, and start island-hopping down through the Channel Islands and Brittany before the Biscay crossing. Nothing but a long, mostly downwind summer ahead.