Destiny sail trial

Nevil Adkins

Sat 16Dec2024 We spent the day doing sea trials in Destiny with the owners, Andy & Janet FennymoreWhite, and the surveyor, Adrian Overbury, as the final part of deciding the purchase. We took her out into the Solent in a light breeze and tried various sails, anchoring and general manoeuvring. Needless to say, I was hooked and the deal was sealed. Sun 17Dec2024 The day was spent doing a full handover briefing with Andy and Janet – going through as many of the systems as we could to learn the details – so much to remember! Mon 18Dec2024 I transferred the purchase money from my Channel Islands account to my UK account ready to then make the final payment – then disaster struck. Despite telling the bank before the transaction, the money disappeared into an anti-money laundering hold and the payment was held up. Desperate called to the bank made little impact and my heart began to sink. To make matters worse, Luke was beginning to feel unwell. Tues 19Dec2024 Still no sign of the money as the delivery crew arrived to be ready to set off to take Destiny down to Cornwall. By lunchtime Luke was feeling worse and we decided that he would be more of a liability than a help so he took the train down to Cornwall as the weather forecast was deteriorating for the next couple of days until a full-on storm was predicted by Friday. Wed 20Dec2024 With still no sign of the money by lunchtime, I decided that the weather window was closing and that setting off into a poor forecast in a boat I was unfamiliar with would not pass the ‘news headline’ test, so I stood down the delivery crew and made arrangements for Destiny to be taken back out of the water once more and stored in Lymington until we found a better time to take her to Cornwall. Sue from Berthon dropped me at the station and I made my way back to Cornwall by train. As the train pulled out from Brockenhurst I received a call from the bank telling me the funds had cleared into my account – the payment was made to Berthon and Destiny was mine but would stay in Lymington until the summer. The forecast storm that arrived on Friday was quite bad - a good call had been taken.