Get to know us!

We’re Rich and Gemma. Most days, we’re just two people buried in laptops dealing with tech and marketing stuff. But the second the weekend rolls around… and if the wind isn’t looking too terrifying… we’re usually racing down the M5 toward the coast.

It all started with a random whim to sign up for diving lessons in Bristol years ago. Rich met Leigh there, and before long, he was heading out as a very willing passenger aboard a boat named Levrik. That was kind of the spark, I guess. He spent years as a “boat princess” (his words, mostly), just learning the ropes until 2022, when he finally signed his life away on a boat mortgage and got his very own: Cheeky Monkey.

The “One Pint” Decision

We first met back in May 2023. About twenty minutes into our first date… one pint in, to be exact… Rich was clearly torn between making a good impression and wanting to get back to the marina. He suggested I should just come out on the boat the following weekend.

I’m pretty sure my friends thought I was about to be the plot of a true-crime podcast, but for some reason, I said yes. It felt right enough at the time. By the second date, we were in Torquay, and I haven’t really left the cockpit since.

Learning the hard way

We moved the boat to Gosport in late 2023. We thought the Solent was where we should be, but to be honest, it was a lot more intense than we bargained for.

One November afternoon, we were heading back from Cowes and everything just went sideways (quite literally). I was feeling pretty rough with the flu, the wind hit 40 knots, and the boat was heeled over hard on the port side, spinning in circles. Rich was below deck getting changed at the time. I remember screaming my head off and seeing a spatula from the galley fly right past his head as he scrambled up the companionway steps to see why the world had turned upside down.

The Genoa had ripped right through. Rich managed to fix things (looking back, maybe not in the most “health and safety” approved way) and we motored back across the choppy Solent to Gosport. That was the moment I realised I couldn’t just be the person who makes the sandwiches and keeps the deck tidy. I needed to actually understand how a sailing boat works. Learning how to depower the boat was probably the most reassuring thing I picked up on my course… just knowing I could actually make it stop. I’m technically more qualified than Rich now, which is a nice bit of weight to throw around when we’re debating what three horn blows from a ferry actually mean.

Back to the blue

The Solent had its moments, but dodging massive ferries every time you want to leave the harbour isn’t exactly the “chilled” vibe we were after. We really missed the clear aqua blue seas of the South West.

So, we brought the Monkey back to Torbay Brixham, via a detour through the Channel Islands and France. There’s just something about the water down here. Even in the middle of a brutal UK winter, when the storms hit the unprotected coast hard and snap our lines, Brixham just feels like home. We never really want to leave our little second home.

The geeky side of things

Because we can’t seem to leave work at the office, we’ve turned the boat into a bit of a floating experiment. Living two hours away in Bristol means we’re constantly worrying if she’s okay.

Rich has rigged up Home Assistant so we can check the battery levels or turn the heating on from the car as we head down to Brixham for the weekend. We’ve even started building our own trip planning app because we got tired of fighting with messy spreadsheets. It’s all very “work in progress”… much like our actual sailing skills… but it helps us feel a bit more connected when we’re stuck in the city.

Where we’re headed

The big, scary dream is to eventually circumnavigate the world in Cheeky Monkey. It feels a bit ridiculous to say out loud while we’re still figuring out basic maintenance and how not to lose a boat hook when catching a buoy.

But we’re just taking one day at a time, and kind of leaning into the messiness of it all for now.

We definitely don’t have it all figured out, and the “to-do” list on the boat only ever seems to get longer, but we’re out here. Somewhere between Bristol and the horizon, usually wondering if we remembered to lock the hatch.