East or West, Med's Best

Roy and Sarah Edwards have enjoyed a dramatically different lifestyle from the majority of us. For more than thirty years they lived full time aboard their cruising home, Cockatoo, which Roy first purchased back in the swinging 60's. Cockatoo, built for the British Admiralty in 1943 as a steam pinnace, was sold out of service and converted to a yacht before Roy found her in his quest for a craft which would allow him to fulfil his dream. Ever since he was a boy he knew he wanted to spend a life on the high seas. He studied navigation when he left school before being called up for National Service. During this time he served on HMS Barleycorn, a bar boat at that time based in Scottish waters. "There's a future for you in the Royal Navy Edwards," his skipper told him when the obligatory two years were up. But Roy had other ideas. He didn't want to be tied down and posted to places beyond his control. After being de-mobbed he bought a fleet of day boats on the East coast of England and ran his own boatyard. Later he took up commercial sea going, working first in the North Sea then later in the Persian Gulf where he became a well-respected tug master working offshore for an American Oilfield Construction company. Sarah, too, had a passion for the sea and used to gaze wistfully out over it as a child admiring its ever changing moods. "Sometimes so calm and peaceful, sometimes so rough and angry." At a tender age, as soon as she could swim, Sarah would be invited to stay with Aunt Phil. Her Aunt had had a passion for boats ever since she was at Cambridge University. She had bought her own boat on which she lived aboard full time. Sarah jumped at the chance to stay and revelled in the freedom and life style so different from the Victorian, strictly run, country-house hotel in which she was brought up. One day this lifestyle would be for her too. "East, West, Med's Best" covers the mad, glorious days of the heady 1980's before technology ruled the world as we now know it. Roy and Sarah were a couple who knew what they wanted and where they were going, who worked together with a common bond and natural understanding of what was needed and when. "You can never neglect the moods of the sea or Nature," says Sarah. "She is so much more powerful than we are. One hand for yourself and one for the boat was a comment made on many an occasion as wind and wave violently rocked Cockatoo causing her to roll roughly and relentlessly." 'You don't have to be mad but it helps, ' became another seasoned saying, always expressed with a laugh, aboard 'Cockatoo'. The tales Sarah has to tell about their experiences and the people they have met along the way make sometimes for exciting, sometimes humorous, sometimes poignant reading but always, at the back of it all is that taste for adventure which brings its own understanding and compassion.