Pat Abbott

I learned today that my old friend and former boss at Oysterworld, Pat Abbot, had lost his fight with leukaemia and died peacefully in his bed yesterday morning (UK time). He had been hoping for a bone marrow transplant, but difficulty in finding a donor and recurrent infections prevented that.
Those of you who knew Pat will not need to be reminded of his larger-than-life presence. Rooms seemed just a little bit smaller when he came into them. For the rest of you, I should explain that Pat and I first met as fellow members of the West Mersea Yacht Club in the 1970s. When he started up Oysterworld Sailing Holidays in the early '80s, I soon began helping out - first by minding the office when he went off sailing, then later as a sailing instructor. Summers in those 1980 years consisted of endless sea-time, chattering and laughter, happy customers (happiness was compulsory at Oysterworld), vast meals in foreign ports, and watching your washing go round and round in the launderette on Saturday afternoons. Such times...
Pat sold Oysterworld in about 1988, and I quite soon followed to take up a much less entertaining but more profitable line of work as a technical author and editor. I last saw Pat in 2003, when (with characteristic flash) he wangled a cut-price cruise in the QE2 and came to see us in Bribane with his wife, Jane.
Good sailing, old friend.