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Driving over Lemons

A Parrot in the Pepper Tree

The Almond Blossom Appreciation Society

For my mother, Jill, without whom

none of this would have happened

Contents

PREFACE

PART 1: COMPETENT CREW

TEACH YOURSELF SAILING

THIS WAY, THEN THAT

SARK BY STARLIGHT

PART 2: THE ISLES OF GREECE

WHERE IS WEARE?

IN PRAISE oF A BUCKET

PART 3: CUTTING UP ROUGH

VINLAND VOYAGE

LOST AT SEA

THE NEW WORLD

EPILOGUE

THE JUMBLIES

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Preface

THE EVENTS IN THIS book took place in the early eighties, a time of dismal illiberalism and warmongering in Britain: the Thatcher years. As for me, I had just turned thirty and was sadly contemplating the ruins of my beloved sheep-farming enterprise.

A few years before the events I relate here I had had a brief brush with fame and fortune as one of the founding members of the rock group Genesis. The boys in the band recognized a crap drummer when they heard one, though, and with some justification they gave me the bum’s rush. Just before they hit the big time, I found myself out on the street.

From there I plunged into a life of well-deserved obscurity, but, it has to be said, great contentment. Much later in life I was propelled, kicking and screaming, back into the limelight, when I was persuaded—very much against my better judgment—to write a book about my experiences living on a farm in the mountains of southern Spain. The book, Driving Over Lemons, was an unexpected success in Britain and Spain, and it even enjoyed a modest circulation on the western side of the pond as well.

As a consequence of this, and of the minor celebrity status it confers, I have achieved the right to burden the reading world with bits and pieces from the story of my life. I won’t spoil the book for you by telling you what it’s about, but maybe a word or two about the effect that these adventures had upon me will serve to clarify the murk.

I came to the sea and sailing upon it by a freak of chance. After an unpromising start, I came to love it with that singular passion that climbers feel for the mountains and pilots feel for the sky. For two years I indulged my passion, and then abandoned it altogether in order to pursue different passions—mountains, travel, and farming. Today I live, with my wife and daughter, on a farm in the mountains of Andalucía. The Mediterranean is not too far away; I’ll go down there from time to time and walk wistfully along the strand, scanning the horizon for the sight of a boat perhaps gliding toward the Pillars of Hercules and the western ocean beyond. But although there will always be a little longing, I shall not cast myself again upon the terrors of the deep, not even for those glorious visions of beauty and joy that touched my life forever, moments I hope I have managed to convey in the following pages.

—Orgiva, Granada, September 2009

PART I

Competent Crew

Teach Yourself Sailing

IT WAS JULIE MILLER who sent me to sea, one wet autumn afternoon in London’s Wandsworth Road. Now of course you haven’t a clue who Julie Miller is, and indeed why should you? … but her relevance to this episode and subsequent adventures is that she had a great-aunt called Jane Joyce.

“Chris!” yelled Julie, who was more than a match for the thundering of London traffic. “What a fantastic coincidence. I’ve been longing to see you and there is something I particularly wanted to ask you … what was it now? Ah yes, how would you like a job looking after a yacht in the Greek Islands this summer?”

“I’d like that very much,” I replied, without so much as a thought. “As it happens I’m not too busy this summer.” Which was the long and the short of it, for at the tender age of twenty-nine my career as a sheep farmer had just hit the skids. The bank had refused any further loans to nurture the flock that my girlfriend, Ana, and I were tending on rented land in Sussex, and my “prospects” as my mother insisted on calling them, were not looking overly bright.

“Terrific,” said Julie. “That’s a very great relief. My great-aunt