‘Buying a boat during the pandemic was the ultimate lockdown legacy’

When travel closed its doors on the world, Nicola Moyne looked to the Suffolk coast for meaning and adventure

Setting sail helped beat the lockdown blues (Bobby Burch)

A westerly wind is ripping through the foresail while sheets of grey fall from leaden clouds above. To starboard, a freight ferry seems to be careering towards us en route to the industrial docks of Harwich, and I’m suddenly aware that I can no longer make out the channel-marking red and green buoys – fingers of fog have descended and I neglected to put my contacts in this morning. 

So far, our first passage aboard Elle – the 32ft Hallberg-Rassy my partner Rich and I are tentatively moving from Walton-on-the-Naze in Essex to Woolverstone in Suffolk – is proving far from plain sailing.

But before I can start questioning the returns policy on our 30-year-old cruiser, a curious grey seal appears just off our bow, his mottled head bobbing up unexpectedly in the salty surf. Soon, another whisker-filled face breaks through the whitecaps. Then another. We watch as three silky sea dancers surface to say hello. And, just like that, I stop fighting the terror of our first sailing adventure and start enjoying it. Because this, I realise, is what I’ve signed up for: learning to embrace the rough with the smooth, one of nature’s most valuable lessons. We’ve all just stopped listening.