With an agreed retirement date approaching, I realised that I would need something to keep me busy when I left my job in software engineering - the 15 years backlog of ignored household chores didn't seem particularly exciting - so I needed a retirement project.

Back in the early 1970s, we went on a number of Norfolk Broads holidays - mostly on boats that I now know to be Hampton Safaris. By chance I saw one of the boats we had hired in 1973/4, registration Y29 - originally called Miss Merrymaid and now called Sunchaser - at Beccles in early 2010. The seed of the idea was sown, my retirement project would be a boat - a Hampton Safari.

These 30-40 year old boats are still popular and nearly all are still afloat, with most now privately owned (popularity of hireboat holidays diminished with the coming of the budget airlines). There seemed to be little relationship between the asking price of those that were for sale and their condition.

I decided to take some advice from an expert - the owner of a boatyard that had operated a small fleet of these boats until 2005, and still a prolific contributor to the Norfolk Broads forum. He confirmed my thoughts that an overweight pensioner intending to use the boat alone in all weather conditions should choose the Safari version with easy access at the front, so I thus limited my search, my project boat was to be a Hampton Safari Mk3.

Yorkshire Lass, one of the Thames Maid Boats fleet from 1979 until 1991, then moved onto British Waterways around York and renamed Estella, was found in a Marina on Humberside. Beverley Boat Transport Services moved her to Beccles on the Norfolk Broads for me. I was fortunate in finding a mooring attached to Hippersons boatyard, who have provided a wealth of friendly and practical help to an ancient novice, and continue to take on the urgent and important jobs with professional excellence.

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