On Saturday Life seems like plain sailing out at sea

Read Martin’s column every week in the Western Morning News

IS it possible to avoid all the bad news – indeed, is it desirable to constantly keep abreast of the doom and gloom? Certainly in terms of world peace, the headlines are as bad as any of us can remember, unless we’re old enough to recall the Cuban missile crisis. That’s a lot of years of not worrying about the slender thread we all live on.

So there will be people who think they cannot take any more of the daily foreboding. I know several people who say: “I just can’t watch TV news any more.”

But given the enormous gravity of the present crisis it is almost impossible to avoid the news and the inevitable feelings of concern. Even young people I know who rarely take an interest in current affairs, and who normally digest just a smattering of news from their smart-phones, are now messaging me to say how upset and worried they are.

Which makes it all the more odd for me to realise I have managed to avoid an entire week of news. I’d normally be hooked to BBC radio bulletins – partly, as I explained last week, because I have a friend in Kyiv – but I am on a yacht at sea and we’ve not had the wherewithal to listen to anything for days. Being cut off from the world, I have not heard from Sasha since I wrote last Saturday’s column, so I do not know how bad her predicament is at present, or even if she is alive.

Now I have at last come ashore to file this column and have caught up on the latest from Ukraine. In these past minutes, while connected to the internet, I have seen a shocking Instagram video Sasha made showing an horrendous amount of destruction in her neighbourhood. Obviously she was fit enough to capture the video, but there’s no way of telling exactly when she shot the footage.

So I feel guilty being out of the loop. However, this trip has been planned for years because the old friend who owns and lives on the boat is celebrating his 70th birthday. Covid looked certain to scupper the trip, but that threat eventually lifted and now, being under silent sail in tropical seas seems ridiculously dream-like.

When I think of Sasha and the cold cruel hellish world she suddenly finds herself in, my present peaceful and colourful existence seems utterly unreal.

Not for the people around me, it doesn’t. As I sit writing these words I can see more than 150 yachts of all shapes and sizes and the majority of people aboard are modern-day seagypsies. In other words, they are people who have spent a considerable amount of money purchasing a lifestyle that allows them to escape the unforgiving world occupied by most of us.

Most are sail-boats which means their owners can cross vast oceans without using a drop of fossil fuel. They are armed with solar panels and wind turbines which allows the occupants to enjoy all manner of luxuries and comfort unknown to the sailors of old. Some are obviously wealthy – many, like the old guy who’s just gone past in the most decrepit dingy I’ve ever seen, are living life on the edge.

Human flotsam and jetsam, maybe. Their lives are tough but comfortable – and not one of the occupants has had to face as much as a traffic jam or a crowded commuter train in years, let alone a war.

If I look out at what could be called the ‘freedom flotilla’ and ask: “Can you have your cake and eat it?” I’d have to say: “Yes, you can.”

There are people in this bay who have roved for decades. My Cornish pal Rick has been on this boat for 18 years and, I have to say, he wears his three score and ten very lightly indeed.

Rick works in the boating world. He does yacht deliveries and looks after pleasure palaces owned by the wealthy… But most of the sea-gypsies who attended his actual birthday bash the other night have made big sacrifices to buy into the lifestyle.

The majority of the boats aren’t cheap – the secondhand value of the one I’m on is 150,000 grand.

So it is a big lifestyle choice. You’d probably have to sell a house and give up your career to do it. Very tempting, certainly, but I reckon you’d need a lot of courage to throw everything to the ocean wind. Even a tropical one.

Would I make such a move? No. I am old and ugly enough to know that there is no such thing as the perfect paradise. Not in this existence, anyway. Life in the trade winds is fraught with problems and you’d need a lot more skill than I possess to make it work. And lonely? Yes and no. Rick sees more people in the average day than I do in my Exmoor valley – but the ocean beyond is very big and unforgiving.

And, as I have discovered this week filled with worrying news, there is a disconnect. A divorce from reality. Wonderful for a holiday. But forever? Not for me. A kind of death in paradise. Strangely, I need my dose of belonging to the real world, no matter how alarming it can be.

Wonderful for a holiday. But a kind of death in paradise. I need my dose of belonging to the real world