Life is full of surprises. You just don`t know where it will take you. I certainly didn`t. I left school with a pack on my back, naïve and heading down a carefree highway not really knowing what I wanted in life, but quickly getting the gist of what life wanted out of me!

I always wanted to do something with my writing, but after weighing up the “prose” and cons and with a family, it wasn`t so much a new chapter in my life, but more like a whole volume! With that, life went into auto pilot really, a regular job, a regular mortgage and large regular bills! I was absorbed into the “system” I so abhorred .I was like driftwood - I went out on the tide and came back in on the tide - like most people did I suppose. Once you are in a trench you know full well it would be best to climb out, but instead you just keep on digging!

It sometimes takes an event of epic proportions to get you out of the tide and take you off auto pilot. And that is what happened to me. A divorce left me hardly rubbing two pennies together and I was propelled back twenty years, with a pack on my back and heading down a carefree highway, but no longer naïve!

With this came opportunity, nothing more to lose and everything to gain. So I set up a business and after fourteen years of hard graft my wife Mandy and I decided to sell up and relocate to Porthmadog in Snowdonia, a place rooted deep in my soul since childhood.

Our new home was on the harbour and we watched the yachts, dinghies, motor boats come and go. Sailing was never in our thoughts until we moved to Snowdonia but It changed my perception of going out on the tide and coming back on the tide. We suddenly liked the idea of sailing and we got some courses under our belts at Conwy and Pwllheli and bought a Cobra 750 called “Tillie”.

This was a big deal for us, knowing little about sailing, nothing about navigation and even less about plotting a course but within three years we had sold “Tillie” and bought a Legend 33. We have sailed “Erimar” all over Wales, south and west England and the Channel Islands to France and it is now in South Brittany.

We are members of Madoc Yacht Club in Porthmadog, infact I am Social Secretary for my sins! Actually, we were in the club when we met Rob and Lydia Jutton of Boatshed North Wales. We became good friends and now we both work with Boatshed North Wales and the new owners Caroline & Andy Topham.

Mandy helps with the admin and I am an Agent and we meet interesting people and interesting boats.It is great that Boatshed has the same work ethic as we do, unsurpassed customer service and unsurpassed professionalism.We have a great work and life balance now with time to enjoy life and this is yet another chapter and like I said, life is just full of surprises!

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Boats moored at Foleux in the Villaine River that I photographed on our sailing trip to La Rochelle and Ile De Re`