Once upon a time, an English couple called Dick and Karen, happily married for many years (and to each other no less), and raisers of two grand laddies (now big and handsome and fully grown) decided they fancied a bit of an adventure before they grew too old to enjoy one without a medico on standby. “I know, a boat!” – they cried in unison: “You can have not one, but lots of adventures on a boat!” And they chuckled knowingly, remembering the night after a barbeque on a Greek beach when the wind suddenly blew up in the wee smalls, and all the boats (in their flotilla) which were lashed together at anchorage, began clashing and creaking as the waves exploded and smashed around them, threatening to wreck the tired old charter yachts, each and every one. And the old marrieds (well, oldish) recalled how, all sleepiness banished, men, women and children rushed from their berths to unravel the springs (that’s a securing rope arrangement for you non-boatees) and set about unscrabbling the spaghetti of anchor chains. And how one by one the boats had groped their way out into the open sea in the pitch black, avoiding the treacherous rocks on either side, and made their way, (some sans lights, some sans radio, and one with its toe-rail prised free from its deck revealing a gaping hole below), to a safer anchorage around a distant headland that also wasn’t lit. And how, despite the night’s chaos, by morning, the sun was shining merrily and everything was okay (if a little battered here and there). And they both agreed most emphatically that had certainly been an adventure – albeit one they were in no hurry to repeat. But hey, a fresh adventure, or two – ones that would take them to sunny climes and exotic shores – well they were definitely up for that.

So each evening, they plotted and planned and spent many, many hours on the internet, Googling themselves goggle-eyed, researching monohulls and multihulls and all the fancy sails and equipment they thought they’d need to sail this or that or the other. And after many more months of test-sailing various models and visiting marinas and boat shows, they finally settled on a lovely new design of multihull, a 45′ catamaran that sailed fast and light, and which flew across the waves like a butterfly on speed (hence its name) – even in the lightest of airs. And this special boat, their Butterfly, well they knew it was the best sailing catamaran they had seen so far.

But the butterfly they test-sailed was only a prototype. To have their very own fully-conceived Butterfly, they would have to wait for her to be built. So they waited, and they waited and they waited – all the time busy preparing and planning to wind up their old life and start their new. And what a lot of plans and preparations there were! Why, as time went by, the list of got-to-dos and ought-to-dos seemed to get longer, not shorter.

But then one bright spring day, after nearly seventeen months of waiting and planning and ticking chore boxes and raiding and rearranging their piggy banks and despairing at the incompetence and cock-eyed systems of certain well-known financial institutions, their very own Butterfly, modified and streamlined and vastly improved from the prototype – well, at last their Butterfly, it was announced, was ready to break out from her Durban-based chrysalis.

So Dick and Karen, unaware Butterfly was about to take them on an odyssey that would test their collective resolve and patience to the full,  packed their sailing gloves and sextant and mosquito juice, said their fondest of farewells to their wonderful grown grand laddies and their amused (and bemused) family and friends – and set off for South Africa to begin their adventure. Which is the point where this blog begins …

Phew! So if you’re sitting comfortably …