A couple who docked at Brighton Marina after a decade at sea have abandoned life on the open wave after falling in love with Sussex.

Clare and Johnny Anderton survived everything from sea sickness to cyclones while travelling around the world on their 13-metre aluminium yacht.

Johnny, a GP, and Clare, a nurse, were planning to continue travelling with their two daughters, aged three and five, by crossing the Atlantic after a stop at Brighton last year.

But the family decided to make their home on dry land after falling in love with the Sussex countryside.

Last year, they sold their boat, The Jolli Jumper, and settled in a rented cottage in Kingston, near Lewes.

Clare, 40, said: "We've swapped the ocean for fields of corn. When we arrived in Brighton at the end of 2002 it was only meant to be a temporary stop.

"But we fell in love with the area. We started doing a lot of the pub walks around Lewes and fancied living in the area but somewhere more rural than Brighton.

"We also had our toddler, Abby, to look after. Despite life at sea being all she and her older sister Meg had ever known, Abby suffered from seasickness.

"I remember doing some crossings with her, lying on the cabin floor with her being very ill. Abby even has terrible trouble with carsickness.

"That was one reason for coming back. With two little ones, a washing machine was also a high priority."

Clare, originally from London, met South African Johnny while they were both working in New Zealand.

Johnny sold his GP practice and the newly-weds set off on the first leg of their voyage on The Jolli Jumper, sailing 15,000 miles from New Zealand to Cape Town in South Africa.

Their two-year journey took in the Pacific islands, Australia, Asia and the Indian Ocean.

Other parts of their ten-year jaunt included sailing the Atlantic to Europe and having a Robinson Crusoe-type experience on an uninhabited island in the Indian Ocean.

Clare said: "We had no mortgage and lived frugally and were pretty self-sufficient.

"We baked our own bread and ate a lot of fish. We'd get huge fish and put them in the freezer, which kept us going.

"At night we anchored the boat rather than paying to dock at marinas."

Much of their power was also self-generated because the boat had solar panels.

The couple had a few hair-raising moments.

Clare said: "We had to deal with some pretty heavy seas sometimes. One of the worst was when we left New Zealand and sailed into a cyclone.

"We could hear a flurry of Mayday calls and a lot of people had to be rescued. Some died. We were very lucky and missed the worst of the cyclone."

At one stage they abandoned their boat for a Land Rover and spent six months driving thousands of miles across the vast dusty plains of Africa.

In Cape Town, Clare started collecting images of places they visited and became interested in an art form she has since brought back to Sussex.

She studied the art of decoupage, an 18th Century craft involving decorative paper cut-outs applied to surfaces such as wood.

She also learnt how to use modge podge, the water-based paste used to seal the paper.

Life in the small living space on the boat was soon overtaken with varnish and paper.

Clare said: "Fortunately, I have an understanding husband who would happily be banished from the saloon when further layers of varnish needed to be applied."

When they left South Africa for Europe, Clare filled all available locker space with the materials needed for her new-found interest.

When they settled in Kingston, Johnny got a job as a doctor at Lewes Prison and Clare returned to her art.

Inspired by places they visited while travelling, she has decorated a variety of items, including toy boxes, clocks, trays, wine racks and mirrors.

Clare said: "When people buy children's items here they tend to be dominated by Western images. Some of the places we went to were devoid of these things. I have tried to incorporate this into some of my work."

For more details on Clare's modge podge art, log on to modgepodge.mysite.freeserve.com or call 01273 478086.