We travel about, stopping in different places for differing lengths of time and have been earning our living mainly through taking on jobs on contract, the most recent being two years running the catering facilities at the Anchorage Club, Illetas, Mallorca until the end of October 2007. Since then, Linnet has returned to freelance writing on the Internet and Robbie has been attending to some much-needed work on board.

We had a fairly reasonable amount of capital to allow us periods without working for anyone else, during which we created various websites including two issues, of three hundred pages each, of an online nautical magazine.

Unfortunately, our schooner was mistaken for a drug-runner in the Azores in November 2000 and a great deal of damage was done in the process of the mistake being realized. The Portuguese government declined to discuss compensation with us, or even explain how the mistake came to be made and, as a result, we have used up most of our capital in restoring the boat to more or less habitable condition - the work continues.

Provided we can live at anchor wherever we go, we can manage financially. We could even afford to pay about 20€ per week, every now and again but not all year round, to stay in a bay. Talking to other live-aboard cruisers we have discovered that an ever-increasing number of local authorities around Europe have been laying down mooring buoys in centuries-old safe anchorages and charging a lot of money for use of one as well as insisting upon a maximum stay of only a few days.

If we cannot stop anywhere for a month or three to work, live-aboard cruisers will be forced to abandon a centuries-old tradition of life at sea. We thought we ought to try and do something about it, before it is too late.