With the end of the war in Europe, the ship was reassigned to the Far East and arrived Colombo in July 1945. "Trumpeter" was one of the ships assigned to take part in Operation Zipper, the recapture of Malaya, but the ending of the war meant only small part the planned attack was carried out. Sinclair left the navy in April 1946 with the rank of Lieutenant commander. Sinclair married Beatrice Ritchie (1915–2010) in Glasgow during the war. She was a policeman's daughter from Ellon, Aberdeenshire, who worked as a fashion consultant and designer at a Glasgow department store. She moved to Torquay to live with an aunt and avoid the German bombing of Glasgow. After the war ended, while her husband was still serving at sea, she opened a hotel in Torquay called Greenacres. The business was a success and in 1964, she bought a private house that she transformed into a second hotel. She named this Gleneagles after her favourite part of her native Scotland. By this time, her husband was assisting her in running the business. He made this decision reluctantly and would have preferred to remain at sea. Sinclair died in Torquay, Devon in 1981 aged 72, from a heart attack and stroke "when some workmen he'd upset painted his patio furniture and car gunmetal grey during the night." His wife died 29 years later in September 2010; they are survived by their two daughters. The Monty Python cast met the Sinclairs while staying at the Gleneagles Hotel in May 1970; they were filming in nearby Paignton. Sinclair was reluctant to let them stay, but his wife argued in favour of them, as their three-week stay in the hotel represented a considerable amount of business during the hotel's off-season. Sinclair's actions included criticising American Terry Gilliam's table etiquette and throwing Eric Idle's briefcase out of a window because he thought it contained a bomb. The Monty Python cast left the hotel for other accommodation with the exception of John Cleese and his then-wife Connie Booth. Cleese later used his mannerisms as an inspiration for Basil Fawlty in "Fawlty Towers". Several of the show's plot lines are alleged to be based in part on real-life events; the Gleneagles Hotel is referenced in the show's second episode, "The Builders". Cleese later played eccentric hotel owners in the 1999 remake film "The Out-of-Towners" and the 2001 movie "Rat Race"; in this latter piece, his character was called Donald Sinclair.