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    Never Ever Buy a Yacht!
    Never Ever Buy a Yacht!
    Never Ever Buy a Yacht!
    Ebook60 pages34 minutes

    Never Ever Buy a Yacht!

    By Paul Stevens

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    This hilarious memoir touches all bases of what can and does go wrong with yachts at sea!

    In a fit of madness the Author bought a 45 foot 15 ton ocean yacht to go cruising round the world.

    This tracks the mind numbing journey between the 2 best days of his life (the day he bought it and the day he sold it).

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPaul Stevens
    Release dateJun 17, 2012
    ISBN9781476042077
    Never Ever Buy a Yacht!
    Author

    Paul Stevens

    There is a favorite line from my novella Dinner Party For Eight in which Angela asks Harry:“What do you think I am?”Harry considered this for a moment. What was she actually?“Well I suppose you are a very beautiful cook.”So if I have to answer the same question what am I actually? I would also need to consider this for a moment. I would like to say I’m an ex astronaut, have more degrees than a thermometer, have competed in the Tour de France without any EPO, surfed Teahupoo in Tahiti and emerged unscathed, sailed round the world, am an ace Alpine skier, am a member of Mensa, have a beauty queen wife and gorgeous kids, and started my own corporation which has listed on NASDAQ. I could go on but like Arnold Schwarzenegger I don’t want to boast.Well to be honest, I have gone some of the way towards all those things. I do have a letter from Wernher von Braun, I do have three degrees in Physics, I have flown in a jet plane (Emirates Air), I do cycle the mega steep hills here where I live but unfortunately can’t get EPO anywhere, I am a keen surfer who has almost managed to break his neck, I am an ocean going skipper and I did own my own yacht though if it was me I wouldn’t sail with me as captain, I do ski but you need to get out of the way, I do have a beautiful wife (though her agreeing to marry me has to be my biggest piece of luck ever) and two great kids, I do have my own software business but no stock exchanges alas and I would like to take the Mensa test but I’m pretty sure I would fail and then I wouldn’t be able to live with that so I would rather rationalize. I live in that sapphire city – Cape Town.

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      Book preview

      Never Ever Buy a Yacht! - Paul Stevens

      Never Ever Buy a Yacht!

      Smashwords Edition

      -by Paul Stevens

      The Two Best Days of Your Life - So You Want to be a Sailor - So You Want to Buy a Yacht - The Nature of the Beast - The We$t Coa$t Crui$e - The Nightmare Continues! - Round The World – Again

      Also by this Author

      All Rights reserved © 2012 Paul Stevens

      The Two Best Days of Your Life

      You know, I’ve never really been a sailor.

      Probably the most fun I had sailing was in fact in a small dingy, known as a Flipper.

      In this we could crisscross the waters of our local bay at speed, doing sharp turnabouts almost on the harbor wall. It was the responsiveness of the boat I enjoyed so much. The smallest shift in position, or trim of the sails, or rudder adjustment translated cause immediately into effect.

      Those days weren’t without fun. Once when sailing with my brother-in-law as we careened along I heard a faint shout. By the time I turned my head he was already about 100 meters in the freezing water having gone overboard and I didn’t even know it. (Wasn’t this a bit soon to have a man overboard?) At once the boat became unstable and capsized and despite my best efforts I couldn’t right it. A long cold tiring swim back to shore for both of us and then enlisting help from beachgoers to help haul the dingy back to shore. Didn’t I know that the mainsail had acted as a drogue in the water and needed to be uncleated first?

      Or when I first bought the Flipper I tried to learn to sail with my wife and set off in a strong wind when all hell broke lose and the upshot was we ended halfway up a river that fed the ocean. Sort of up the creek…

      And yet here I was, a Master of my own ocean going yacht at 65 years old.

      A beast of no less than 15 tons and 45 foot in length which struck fear into anyone trying to sail this unforgiving contraption from hell.

      It was hard for me to believe I had actually done this.

      I had bought an ocean going boat and refitted it.

      I knew how to sail and maneuver this monster.

      Let me hasten to tell this was not a normal ocean going yacht. That would have been a relatively easy task.

      No, this boat was a Grade A bitch, a nightmare, a struggle from start to finish with only one redeeming quality.

      Yes, I had experienced crashes, fires, storms, close escapes, hair-raising moments and financial hemorrhaging to get where I wanted to be.

      I started this venture as a total ignoramus, and ended wiser, poorer but with a deep sense of satisfaction that I stuck through a process that was not for the faint hearted.

      Sure, I scratch my head and ask why in the heck I went through all of this aggravation, training and continual apprehension.

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