My husband and I set up our dream life on a canal boat. Then he died

Yahoo

3 days ago

When I first sat down to play the piano onboard my canal boat, I cried. It had been silent for six months following the death of my husband Masayuki Tayama, or Masa as he was known.
Masa was a professional concert pianist, who loved playing Rachmaninov most of all. We met in 2015 and got engaged a year later. I moved down from Orkney in Scotland, where I grew up, to be with him. Life was always very full and intense.
Music was so ingrained in Masa's identity and he was someone who couldn't ever do anything by halves. He always said he was 'one or zero' and he became an enthusiastic expert in anything that piqued his interest. He had a wonderful laugh and his whole face would light up with humour when he found something funny.
We loved to holiday together in barges, travelling up and down Britain's beautiful canal system. Being a performer is not the most relaxing lifestyle and Masa could get stressed, but everything melted away when we were on the water.
Setting up our dream life on the water
In the summer of 2017 we booked a canal boat holiday in Worcestershire and took a digital piano on board with us. I studied music at King's College London and am a piano teacher myself, and we both had concerts coming up.
While one of us practised, the other one steered the boat through the waterway. People stared through the windows as they heard the music. That's when the idea first came to mind. I said to Masa, 'Wouldn't it be fun to do concerts on a boat?'
The original idea was to buy a second-hand boat, renovate it and get a digital piano, but then we thought if we're going to do it, we should do it properly. We wanted to create something extraordinary that people would remember for the rest of their lives: something completely different – but which also looked and sounded like a traditional concert hall.
We went to the Crick Boat Show in May 2018 and looked at narrow boats which are typically 6ft 10in wide. But in our minds, the ideal boat kept on getting bigger and bigger so, in the end, we decided to have a widebeam canal boat custom-built by Nottingham-based Tristar Boats. It's 67ft long and 12ft wide, which meant it would be able to fit a Steinway grand piano – although we did eventually have to lower it in through the skylight!
Naturally, we named the boat, which is now five years old, after Rachmaninov, Masa's favourite Russian composer. It's black and red and absolutely beautiful. We combined elements of traditional nautical and concert hall styles and there are some really special features, including a state of the art surround-sound system and hand-made stained glass windows. Having played all over the world, including at London's Wigmore Hall and the Southbank Centre, Masa now had his own floating concert hall.
Shock diagnosis
We spent the pandemic teaching online and preparing the boat, while I trained at Leiths School of Food and Wine in order to cater the cruises. Masa would skipper and do performances.
We launched The Piano Boat in July 2021, a year after taking delivery of it. It was good timing as that week we appeared on Channel 4's 'My Floating Home,' which followed Rachmaninov's journey from a Nottingham boatyard to its permanent mooring at Harefield Marina on the Grand Union Canal.
We staged a grand opening in August 2021, with a weekend of talks and performances in London. Masa had been feeling unusually tired and had abdominal pain that we just put down to the stress of starting a new business. We didn't really think anything of it at the time as it was not unusual for him in times of stress – but this was perhaps more constant, with hindsight.
Still unwell by Christmas, he was sent straight from the doctor's to hospital: 'Something's really wrong here,' the GP said.
In January 2022 he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, which doesn't normally have any symptoms until late on. It was awful. Everything changed in a matter of hours. The word 'terminal' was never mentioned, neither between us nor by anybody else, and I'm so grateful as it would have been the worst thing for Masa.
We took things day by day and in April 2022, after his first round of chemotherapy, we got married. We'd been engaged for years but had never planned a wedding as life always seemed to get in the way. We had a small party in our garden in north-west London and it was a really nice day.
Although we were still technically living in the house, and I was still teaching from there, we spent more and more time on the boat. It was really good for Masa as he loved being on the water and always found it very calming. We also had two kittens onboard, who he named Charlotte and Elizabeth, which were a welcome distraction.
The doctors took Masa off the chemotherapy treatment that September, as his scans showed that the cancer hadn't spread. After six months of chemo, they wanted to take stock and give him a break. He was looking good and feeling well so we decided to return to running the piano cruises.
Final performances
In December 2022, a year after his last cruise performance, Masa was back on stage and skippering The Piano Boat, with some help manning the locks.
He underwent radiotherapy in early 2023 before having another few rounds of chemo that summer. We ran 30 concerts onboard the boat that year and Masa also did a few public performances.
There was one in February 2023 where he played Rachmaninov's second piano concerto which has lots of big chords and is quite energetic to play. He told me afterwards that as he was playing he thought, 'I don't feel like a cancer patient.'
That July he performed at the Hitchin Festival and although he was really ill by then, you couldn't hear it in the music. It was one of the best performances I ever heard him give.
We staged quite a few more cruises in August, and he continued to perform, even though he struggled to get up and down the steps on the boat. He was determined to get through the summer schedule and I think performing gave him purpose. He played his last concert at the end of August and died three and a half weeks later.
Living our dream
It's been very up and down since then. It's not just the loss and the absence – sometimes I feel like I'm OK and managing, then at other times I want to crawl into a cave and stay there.
We had lived incredibly closely, both working from home and then together on the boat project, and spent a good portion of most days together, often with lazy mornings and late nights. I'm grateful for that as we had as much time as we possibly could have together.
I stayed on the boat after Masa died and now live here permanently. My mum lived onboard with me for a month at the beginning – I don't know what I would have done otherwise. It felt like nothing really mattered and I needed someone to look after me as I was barely even feeding myself.
About three weeks after Masa died I got a call from someone asking whether I wanted to sell the boat. I was quite taken aback as I was barely functioning at that point.
Selling the boat has never been a consideration and Masa and I never discussed it. It's the home I share with the cats, who've been good company. Nevertheless, living alone has taken me by surprise. I always felt happy in my own company, but at times it's been a bit too much.
My parents volunteered very early on to help when I felt ready to return to the cruises. I felt like the boat hadn't really had a chance to get going and it would be too much of a shame to abandon it.
But I didn't know what to do about the piano. Masa had been very precious about it and nobody was allowed to play it. I was so used to hearing him performing, practising, recording – it was his sound. Then a pianist friend said to me: 'I feel sorry for your piano – you need to play it.' I cried as soon as I sat down to play it, of course I did.
That Easter, I invited friends over for some informal music gatherings as it felt like the boat had been too quiet and needed some life again. Everybody brought some food, we played music and went out for a little cruise.
Then, in October 2024, The Piano Boat set sail for its first cruise without Masa. It's been really challenging getting up and running again and I've been so fortunate to have had so much help. I definitely couldn't have done it on my own. My dad had done his helmsman training so is now skippering, while my mum helps me out with the catering. And we have another invaluable crew member called Chris who operates the locks.
Performing concerts has never really appealed to me, besides I've got too much to do hosting, getting the food ready and serving drinks so I've invited pianists I know to perform. It's been very important to take on the right people as it's very intimate. A performer has to be happy to talk to the audience and be a bit of a host themself. I'm conscious that it's a big commitment to ask someone to do that because you're not just giving a concert and then getting off the stage.
We cruise for four hours from Harefield at a very leisurely pace, covering only about 3.5 miles. We go very slowly as it's a wide boat and we don't want to disturb the wildlife or other moored boats.
This was our dream, and now I find it hard that the responsibility is all mine. I'm no longer living as day to day as I once was. But people have been supportive, and I hope Masa would be happy about me carrying on without him. I think he would be.
See thepianoboat.com for more details on Rhiana's cruises
As told to Lianne Kolirin
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