48 Boating New Zealand
never responded to the emailed enquiry), and that it was
necessary to establish relationships with English-speaking
brokers. Even then it was a struggle to get them to take me
seriously until I was actually in France.
We quickly hatched a cunning plan to travel to France,
complete the purchase of Neil’s boat in St Crypien on the French
Mediterranean coast, and take her up into the Canal du Midi
to find a suitable spot to haul her out for winter, so that Neil
and his wife could return for an extended canal cruise in 2018.
Once Moderato was put to bed for the winter we would travel to
Cherbourg in the North and La Rochelle in the Bay of Biscay, to
look at two yachts I was interested in. A boy’s own adventure.
Once we had survived the glamour of international travel,
involving several connecting flights, train then taxi, we set up
headquarters in an apartment in the pretty seaside town of St
Crypien to complete the purchase of Moderato.
When we went to look at her on the hard, in a boat yard a
couple of blocks back from the sea, Moderato proved to be as
good as the photographs promised. But some of the cosmetic
remedial work agreed to as a result of the survey was a wee bit
agricultural, and the recent service used an oil rated for both
petrol and diesel engines – an oxymoron to me. Neither of these