This weekend is officially the end of the season at Suffolk Yacht Harbour, where we keep our boat.
Not only do the clocks change, it's also the last race of Haven Ports YC's Autumn Series, the club's laying up supper, and Clarke and Carter's yacht fair - claimed to be the biggest gathering of used boats for sale on the East Coast.
This annual event is celebrating its 30th year, with more than 130 used boats on show. With asking prices ranging from £2,995 (1990 Zulu skiff) to £350,000 (1999 Swan 48) they pretty well cover the spectrum of leisure sailing. (There are some powerboats, too).
Every boat in the catalogue has a story to tell. In a few cases, an owner will be giving up sailing, having reluctantly decided that the years are catching up too fast. For more, the sale represents a step up the ladder to something bigger and faster, that will open up new opportunities and horizons.
But even if you are selling with the exciting prospect of trading up, parting with a boat you have owned for years and shared all sort of adventures with will probably be painful.
I suppose there may be some people for whom it is just as unemotional as selling a car. (There are probably people who have more emotional attachment to their cars than I do, come to that). But both times we have sold boats I have found the parting traumatic, even though on both occasions I was excited about what would be coming in their place. It felt like betraying a dear friend.
The yacht fair concept has a lot to recommend it, from the viewpoint of both buyer and seller. The prospective purchaser gets the chance to look at a number of boats all in a single location. It saves an awful lot of driving. And it is much easier to make comparisons between craft in one place, where you can walk from one to the other, and have another look.
For the seller, it also means a lot of viewings in a short space of time - and with luck, getting the whole painful business over and done with mercifully quickly.
We sold our last boat through Clarke and Carter's yacht fair three years ago. We'd had her for 16 years and she was really part of the family. We put some time and effort into getting her ready for the sale - “decluttering” and cleaning just as they tell you on all those TV property shows. And it paid off. She was sold to the first person who saw her on the first day of the show.
“That means you didn't ask enough,” said friends, but we were happy: we'd got the clean break we wanted, without having to endure lots of “viewings” by people who might not understand her, and worse, might say unkind things about her.
It's quite fun to speculate, watching the yacht fair-goers wandering along the pontoons clutching their sales particulars, which are serious buyers, and which “just looking.” But yesterday we saw one prospective purchaser sitting in the cockpit of a yacht for sale - a very attractive pocket cruiser, immaculately presented, as the brokers would say. He had his hand on the tiller and a faraway look in his eye. He had found his dream boat.
And it was a comforting reminder that the yacht fair doesn't just mark the end of this season. For all the new owners, and many of the sellers, it really means the beginning of next year's adventures.
The Clarke and Carter Yacht Fair continues at Suffolk Yacht Harbour, Levington, until Sunday October 28. For more information visit www.clarkeandcarter.co.uk
