Below are all of the beautiful words submitted, to be read at the service by Jim’s friends and family. Love, love, love.

[Read by Trudy & Tracy, for our dad]
We will think about you everyday and when these lumps of painful sadness finally melt, a sunrise of memories will radiate; with every amazing thing about you. And we can smile at every memory, because you made sure we learned that happiness will always crumble sorrow. Life is joy and full if you are open to it.

Your passion for the ridiculous will never fade and I am sorry your plan for our family to sail around the world failed because Trudy cried and I vomited all the way up the islands on the test voyage. Mum you really are a patient soul to put up with all of our collective shenanigans. So instead we would camp as a family – in a green army tent the size of a small village – on the beach in Tobago for weeks at a time, while you windsurfed daily and we ate from massive pots of stew you concocted. So many of those salty, sandy, sun-kissed memories linger with me to this day.

You are the most astoundingly superb dad we could ever have. Through the amazing parents that you and Mum were, we learned the values of an open home, open heart and open mind and the power of never being too proud to say sorry. Because of you, we know the powers of love and family transcend everything. Time in this life is a drop in the bucket of eternity and I will never feel alone again because you are here, everywhere and always.

We will strive to be the kind of parents and humans that you both taught us to be. We learnt the seamless transition of parental love and support that blossomed into friendship now that we are adults. You are easily one of the best friends Trudy and I ever had, and without doubt you were certainly the most brightly dressed of them.

We can never thank you enough for everything you taught us and we can only continue your honour by mirroring your passion for life, adventure, challenges, generosity, fun and humour. Your sense of humour, for good or bad is our humour. I would like to read a poem that dad taught us when we were both very young. Here it goes:

A little fly flew past my door, and flew into the grocery store,
He pooed on the ham, and peed on the jam,
and wiped his bum in the grocery man.

We love you larger than all the universes in our universe. This feels too soon to ever say goodbye properly, but one hundred more lifetimes with you would not be enough; so instead we will say farewell, until next time. Nothing ends it just goes on in another way. We will love you forever and ever and ever and back again. Twice.

 

[Read by Lorna, for her brother]
Being Jim’s little sister, I’ve got a lifetime of stories about him.  We were so fortunate to have a really happy childhood in the home Mum and Dad created just before the Second World War – Tamarisk, Golden Valley in the village of Bitton, squeezed between Bristol and Bath.  A welcoming place where, like Esperanza Alta, friends and family just popped in, ate us out of house and home and we laughed a lot.  That’s where and from whom Jim learnt the art of hospitality and generosity.

Apparently, he was very protective of me when I was a baby, guarding the pram outside the Post Office.  Didn’t last long though – he would always beat the stuffing out of me in our pillow fights – and I’d come back for more.  Mum used to tell the story of young Jim being told off once – he was very naughty, of course – and she watched him stomp up the road, turn round and mutter, ‘you horrible house’.

But he was very community-minded.  One day the primary school teacher met Mum in the shop and she thanked her for the Christmas tree.  ‘What Christmas tree?’ she asked.  Jim had only dug up one of the newly-planted fir trees at the bottom of the garden and dragged it to school.  When challenged, he said, ‘well, you’ve got plenty of others!’

If you’d met Mum, Queenie to most of you, you’d know where Jim got his wicked sense of humour from but he seemed to develop it to a whole new level.  If you knew Dad, you’d know where he got his love of making things and getting things working.  It’s my theory that the American jeep he restored one bitterly cold winter was when that vile disease crept into his bones.  It may have been that same winter, 1963, when Jim welded together his own snow plough and offered his services to the local council to clear our little country lanes of humungous snow drifts.  He’d have an idea and put it into action.

The most painful time for us as a family was when Jim first sailed single-handed across the Atlantic.  It was a long and silent wait in those days – no modern technology – 30 days – until we had a phone call from Barbados – ‘I have a caller for you’, said the telephone operator – and then, ‘oh, sorry, he’s got back to his yacht in the lagoon’.  What a relief though.  And the Caribbean became his adopted home, where his peculiar approach to life fitted in just perfectly, aided and abetted by Kareen, of course.  His roots never completely dried up though and he needed his British fix of his old friends and family most years.  In fact, all his old mates are meeting right now in the Upton Inn to raise a glass to Jim – he’d like that.  I remember a couple of years ago he was so insistent on walking on a North Cornwall beach and clifftop, where Dad had been born and where we had many family holidays.

Of late, we did have a few, just a few, serious conversations about life.  He knew he had lived life to the full, was more than content with his lot and valued all of his family and friends.  He just needed to shout at you to tell you that.  Even in hospital unable to voice his words, you knew when he was shouting at you by the expression on his face.

I’m so proud to have been his sister – I can just see that unique grin spreading over his face now, embarrassed but darned pleased too.

 

[From Jim Cross, for his friend]
read by his nephew, Glen Beadon
I first met Jim when he was an apprentice in about 1962 at Fry’s Chocolate Factory, where we became good friends. We decided to do spare time work together and bought a bulldozer and did several weeks’ work in the woods at Dyrham Park Estate. Soon after we both bought an American Jeep each, and had great fun in the winter on the snow & ice.

Later we decided to go into partnership and between us built a factory ourselves at the bottom of our garden – after sacking the two guys we contracted to build it as the workmanship was so bad – after two days’ construction we pulled it down, and built it ourselves.  We then bought machinery and equipment to make JCB digger buckets, and general machining.  As the business grew we employed several staff and formed a limited company in 1968, appropriately named JC Engineering Ltd.

After a couple of years or so, Jim got the wanderlust and went as a crew member on a yacht going to the Bahamas.  Jim returned to UK after a couple of months, came back to JC Engineering for about a year and decided that engineering wasn’t for him.

He then bought his first boat Peter Rabbit and sailed across the Atlantic single handed.
In the early eighties Jim took delivery of a new boat Baby Breeze.  It was moored in Helford Passage where we stayed on it overnight and had lots of fun and laughs.  Later in the year Jim and Dave Williams sailed it to Villa Mora in Portugal for the winter. Jim came back to UK in the following February, visited us, and said that he and Dave were shortly going to sail Baby Breeze from Portugal to the Canary Islands and onto the West Indies. I mentioned that they needed an extra crew member and managed to get press ganged into joining them.

In March we went to Villa Mora and found the boat in a poor state, and after a few days and lots of maintenance, was ready to leave.

We left at 3pm on a glorious hot and sunny day, and at 8pm, the weather changed to rain and a force eight gale. By 10pm the boat was at heeling at about 30 degrees

Jim called out from below decks,  “water and diesel is swilling up and down the cabin floor.”  We found that the diesel tanks under the two rear bunks were badly leaking and the bilge pumps were not working. After sometime, we fixed the pumps, but due to the bad design and workmanship of the tanks, were impossible to repair.

The storm lasted 4 days but when it was over, there was no wind at all, so we started the engine and continued. After many engine breakdowns we arrived at 6am in the south of Grand Canary; all of us were knackered! Dave and I carried out lots of repairs to the boat, but after a few days had to return to UK.  Jim left on his own a week later and sailed across to the West Indies, and had a brilliant crossing.

Mona ( Ronnie ) and I, had a memorable holiday at Jim and Kareen’s in 1991, saw the carnival, met lots of their lovely friends and heard the cannon go off with a grapefruit inside; we’ve never heard a bang quite like it !
Jim has been a wonderful friend and will always be in our hearts, it has been a great privilege to have known him.

 

[From Alan Avent, for his friend]
read by his brother-in-law, Ted Baker

We will be with you this weekend in thoughts and prayers, but desperately sad not to be with you in person. The blog has warmed the hearts of many people and it has been a rare privilege to share this tragic experience with such a fabulous and incredibly close family.  Your Mum is no doubt very proud of the way you have all reacted in such a crisis.  I have said it once but I will say it again.  Behind every good man is a good woman.  Jim was very fortunate because he had three good women.

I have enclosed a postcard that David at some very tender age wrote to Mary’s Mum.  You will see that he mentions Jim.  Our kids worshipped him and looked forward to him coming to stay.  On one occasion he took them all down to the beach at Wembury.  He donned his wet suit and diving gear and then, to their amazement, proceeded to walkout to sea until he disappeared beneath the waves!!  They were horrified. Twenty minutes latter he reappeared unscathed, apart from two big blood shot eyes!  He had gone too deep and the pressure must have burst blood cells in his eyes.

When we lived in Bristol, he turned up one evening with a fire engine which he hadcut in half, shortened it and turned it into a breakdown lorry, complete with a crane.  When he was no age at all, about 18, he designed and built a grain dryer which worked so well that he sold it to a local farmer.  But I guess he was under15 years when he saved up and bought his first welding kit – twenty five pounds  out of the Exchange & Mart weekly magazine and with the help of a friendly farmer he started making farm gates.  In fact, he was always covered in grime and great, most of which found its way onto the carpet at Tamarisk!

When he was still very young, he went into partnership with Jim Cross – and what a partnership.  They could do anything – and did.

I am so pleased that Tracy paid tribute to Jim’s double Atlantic crossing.  Jim listened to Mary and I yapping on endlessly about sailing and some of our trips.  Harry (his Dad), was incredibly knowledgeable about the practicalities of seamanship and sailing but was plagued, as was Jim, with acute seasickness.  This is a terrible, terrible handicap, not to be under-estimated.  After endless conversations, often well into the night, it was obvious he was not only set on crossing the Atlantic – BUT SINGLE-HANDED!

He found the perfect boat – ‘Peter Rabbit’ –and we had lots of fun around Falmouth to give Jim a chance to get to know the boat.  Then he disappeared and the next we knew he was in Trini.  Read his log and you will see that he had a rough time but not enough to put him off doing the same again some years later in ‘Baby Breeze’.  Again, he generally shared ‘Baby Breeze’ and many of his friends enjoyed some great sailing around Falmouth before he set off again.

I have been compiling a list of the words that best describe Jim’s life – I daresay Kareen could add a few more, and will .  My list would start with humour, fun, generosity, modesty and humility.  These are the things I loved him for – yes, loved him – like the brother I never had.

Time and distance never made the slightest difference.  We could always pick up where we left off.  It’s comforting to remember that Jim, Kareen and friends were here the very day we moved into this new home.  The timing was perfect.  We were in, the panic over, the sun was shining and we could all sit outside around the table we had shared so many times before and enjoy a glass of wine.

We will be with you on Saturday.  Our love and kindest thoughts to you all.

 

[From Wendy James, for her friend]
read by his sister, Lorna Baker
This is a tribute to Jirimmy from Werendy – stupid names but typical of Jim.

Jim and my late husband Tone were friends for years starting at Bath Technical College where Jim was making steam engine components for the Bishop of Bath and Wells, – and Kareen nursed me in hospital.  Between them, Jim and Kareen brought us together – and we went around as a foursome as our friendship grew.  They were brilliant matchmakers.

Eventually, we planned our wedding for December 1974.  Jim became very disgruntled by this fact – that we were going to tie the knot before him and Kareen.  He said ‘we can’t let these blank blank blanks get there before us”. Before we knew it, they’d booked a date in November – but because it was such short notice, they could only hold their reception in a friendly farmer’s cowshed.  That meant we all had to muck in –  literally – to clean it out, whitewash it, hang ivy decorations and hire space heaters to dry and warm the shed through – and this was just a week before their wedding date.  All because he had to get there before we did.  Typical!

Not only was Jim stoical on his final journey but that’s how he lived life. You’ve left a huge void in my life, Jim.  Even though the miles separated us, I never felt you were that far away, such was your strength of character.  A free spirit guided by a zest for life led to a colourful personality – and an ability to fall asleep at the liveliest of parties.  Your qualities of openness, honesty and fun made you a very lovable, likeable friend.  Thank you, Jim.  I will miss you for ever. I love you more than you will ever know.

Happy Sailing ……

 

[From Charles Brash, for his friend]
I always thought my father was the best.  Five years after he passed I met someone who gave him serious competition.  Enter Jim Craig.  They both had the art of using the most profane words of the English language and making them sound like beautiful poetry with excerpts of music from the Swan Lake ballet.

Forty years ago during a visit to a friend’s home at La Brea my wife and I noticed some thing sitting in the corner of the living room.  It was very white and dressed in a navy blue turtle necked warm weather top and shivering.  It had recently crossed the mighty Atlantic and was obviously lost.  My wife, a Christian woman and a do-gooder turned to me and said ‘We have to help this person.  He seems nice enough but desperately in need of salvation.’

There was a project in a remote area with which nobody wanted to get involved – Matura.  The next morning my wife and I drove north and collected Jim and Kareen outside Kay Donna drive-in cinema.  Located on the 300 hundred acre property was a partial mud hut/thatched roof manger type dwelling.  As I recall, they moved in immediately.  We said goodbye and assumed we would not see them again for some time.  NOT SO!

The project involved the extraction of gravel from the lagoon for use in oil wells.  Jim soon changed that to manufacturing concrete blocks using Meluja from the estate.  I discovered the genius in the man when he erected the block plant using a fork lift and joint of a drill pipe.

As time went by Jim continued to support his family using his wit, innovation and honesty.  He was an ideas man.

His thrift and his love for colour and patterns is exhibited by the shirts he wore, having purchased them in St Martin at RIMA, an Indian store.  Jim had a special price, three for #20. I will miss calling him at two or three a.m. from abroad during a drinking session.  Whenever I asked, ‘to whom do I speak ?’ his response would be, ‘The Archbishop of Canterbury’ or the colourful language referred to earlier.

I could go on and on as can most of you so I will end by saying ‘God bless you, brother.  May His eternal light shine down on you and may you be with Him this day in Paradise.’