Clapton_ The Autobiography - Eric Clapton [143]
I had recently bought a house in the south of France, and with the shows over, I drove down there with my dear friend Brian Roylance, who was going through a rough time with his marriage and needed a break. There we met Melia and the kids and my in-laws, Mac and Laurie, and spent a few days getting ready before getting on the boat in Cannes. I had booked it for the whole of June, which was a huge gamble, not knowing whether the girls would like it or if they would get seasick, and if that were the case I had no contingency plan whatever. Thank goodness everyone loved the boat right away, and I breathed a huge sigh of relief. Only on a couple of occasions, when the weather was quite rough, did the kids experience any ill effects, so on the whole it was a great success, and we were set for a fantastic holiday.
Our captain Nick Line had put together a fairly flexible plan to sail around Corsica and Sardinia, with the option of going on to Sicily, depending on weather and whatever preferences developed as the trip went on. At first we weren’t really sure what we wanted from our cruise, but there were lots of options in terms of things to see, and it quickly transpired that soft, sandy beaches were the simplest solution for the kids. I personally loved Corsica. The landscape and rugged architecture were magnificent, so were the beaches, and every port we sailed into had a different charm. I had never been there before and fell in love at first sight. It being early summer, the weather was still quite cool with strong winds, which made the water almost too cold to swim in, so we kept moving and sailed down to Sardinia where, though the weather was warmer, the atmosphere was drastically different. From the sea, all the buildings looked like they belonged in a Flintstones movie. They were like caricatures of ancient buildings, obviously built quite recently from flimsy materials, and were, to my eye, very silly looking. I couldn’t wait to sail back to Corsica.
Melia’s folks left after a week, and Richard and Chris Steele took their places, with Brian staying on for a few more days. During the trip I spoke to the captain only occasionally, usually to discuss our sailing plans, but I noticed that Richard was spending a lot of time up on the bridge and kept coming back to us with little snippets of inside information. A couple of days into their stay, he came back looking very excited and, with a curious gleam in his eye, broke the news that the ship was for sale. “You can’t be serious?” I said, but he was not to be put off, and kept coming back with more and more news. Finally I gave in to my curiosity and broached the subject directly with the skipper.
Yes, it was for sale, and for a price that seemed quite reasonable. I asked around a lot and spoke to my business manager, Michael Eaton, who to my surprise was very encouraging, unlike most of the other people I spoke to, who were fairly negative about the whole business. Funnily enough, the people whose advice I normally value the most leaned to the positive side, their general attitude being, “You can’t take it with you.” So, after not much deliberation, I took the plunge and made an offer. What I said to the captain, and anybody else who needed to know, was that I was not really interested in buying a boat as such, but I wanted this boat. It is a seriously beautiful craft, and leagues ahead of anything else I have seen on the water.
For the first time in my life I had to borrow money to pay for something, and I wasn’t very comfortable with that. Throughout my life I had always bought everything outright, probably a reaction to my childhood, where everything was paid for in installments, “the never-never” as it was known back then. Luckily, I had a tour coming up, which we had named the “tour to end