For most of my life, I've messed about in boats. Ratty said it all, as far as I'm concerned.

In 2000, I took about five or six months off to bum about in my little Virgo Voyager 23, Pamela Jane, and there's a record of this trip on the excellent Kahawi website - take a look at it for yourself. I enjoyed that a lot, and then got a job in Ramsgate, followed by a couple of months off in 2001.

Pamela Jane in St Katherines, Tower of London, and in Courcelles, northern France.

In 2002, I made a bit of a mistake, and got a job which I became more committed to in 2002 - I just took ordinary holidays, along with my partner Dot - we became a bit of an item in January of that year, which proves that there is hope for everyone, or something like that!

But I think that taking serious lumps of time off does corrupt your attitude to work; I used to enjoy it, to some extent at least, but now I really do think that the main reason to do any of it is to maintain your life as you want it, and to finance the entertaining bits - beyond that, who knows!

I got my head together properly in the early winter of 2002, when I was reminded that it doesn't matter how hard you try and how hard you work, you can be had a go at! I felt pretty hard done by after being verbally blasted by my boss, and that was when I made the decision to leave in the spring of 2003, for another little excursion. we looked at all kinds of boats, and in the end I decided to buy a narrow beam canal cruiser, Catcho.