It’s always odd how rapidly a new holiday apartment or hotel room becomes familiar. The first day you can’t find the light-switch, one of the drawers sticks, and you have to remember the shower tap turns that way; but within a day or so those actions become so automatic that you forget they were ever strange.

So, after eleven months on board, it’s no surprise that Garmin (or, more properly and prosaically, CV20) should feel like a second home. I can walk across the deck and unthinkingly avoid the numerous trip hazards, nip down the companionway without bumping my head, duck unconsciously as I walk aft towards my bunk, and generally clamber around without much more thought than a chimpanzee in its enclosure. I have seen every bit of the boat, from masthead to keel-bolts, bowsprit to transom. I’ve been up the mast and dived under her hull. I’ve fixed winches and ropes and sails and blocks more times than I’d care to remember.
But it’s more than just geography – there’s a symbiosis to sailing a yacht, and I understand why for centuries boats have been female: as in any relationship, it’s the idiosyncrasies that generate intimacy. I know which sail plan suits Garmin best in which winds and sea-states; I know the feel of her helm at a given wind angle. I can tell the wind-speed just from the sound in her rigging, and the boat speed from the sound of the water rushing past her hull as I lie in my bunk. I can sleep through the normal noises of her winches, but wake at something unusual. We have looked after her, and she has looked after us: even in our toughest moments in the North Pacific we never doubted the toughness of her hull, and I never lost sleep through anxiety about our safety (unlike some of our faithful Garminion supporters!). 

All of which makes the end of the relationship harder, and I’ll admit to laying my hands on the helm one last time this morning, and giving the hull a farewell pat. 

Of course, Garmin is more than just a boat: she is also her crew, and they have been an incredible bunch of people to sail, eat, struggle, argue, laugh, drink and live with. Long after I’ve readjusted to my normal home, and the automatic actions of living on Garmin have faded, the friendships we made and shared will persist. 

If life is a book, then this has been one hell of a chapter. There have been boring bits I’d have preferred to skip, incredible bits that I wish had lasted longer, and terrifying bits I would rather had never been written at all. But I know that, years from now, I will occasionally flick back a few dozen pages and say to myself, “Wow. I sailed round the world”.