Preface

THE EVENTS IN THIS book took place in the early eighties, a time of dismal illiberalism and warmongering in Britain: the Thatcher years. As for me, I had just turned thirty and was sadly contemplating the ruins of my beloved sheep-farming enterprise.

A few years before the events I relate here I had had a brief brush with fame and fortune as one of the founding members of the rock group Genesis. The boys in the band recognized a crap drummer when they heard one, though, and with some justification they gave me the bum’s rush. Just before they hit the big time, I found myself out on the street.

From there I plunged into a life of well-deserved obscurity, but, it has to be said, great contentment. Much later in life I was propelled, kicking and screaming, back into the limelight, when I was persuaded—very much against my better judgment—to write a book about my experiences living on a farm in the mountains of southern Spain. The book, Driving Over Lemons, was an unexpected success in Britain and Spain, and it even enjoyed a modest circulation on the western side of the pond as well.

As a consequence of this, and of the minor celebrity status it confers, I have achieved the right to burden the reading world with bits and pieces from the story of my life. I won’t spoil the book for you by telling you what it’s about, but maybe a word or two about the effect that these adventures had upon me will serve to clarify the murk.

I came to the sea and sailing upon it by a freak of chance. After an unpromising start, I came to love it with that singular passion that climbers feel for the mountains and pilots feel for the sky. For two years I indulged my passion, and then abandoned it altogether in order to pursue different passions—mountains, travel, and farming. Today I live, with my wife and daughter, on a farm in the mountains of Andalucía. The Mediterranean is not too far away; I’ll go down there from time to time and walk wistfully along the strand, scanning the horizon for the sight of a boat perhaps gliding toward the Pillars of Hercules and the western ocean beyond. But although there will always be a little longing, I shall not cast myself again upon the terrors of the deep, not even for those glorious visions of beauty and joy that touched my life forever, moments I hope I have managed to convey in the following pages.

—Orgiva, Granada, September 2009