I was about 11 when I first read Swallows and Amazons.\u00a0 Despite feeling no social connection at all with either the Swallows or the Amazons, I wanted to explore and map some part of the world.\u00a0 All the better if I could do it by sailboat.\u00a0 This was going to be unlikely though, with Shropshire being the largest landlocked county in the UK.\u00a0 It took hours to get to the sea.
\nBut it was not to be.\u00a0 We were a “horsey” family and all our resources went into maintaining and enjoying our two ponies.\u00a0 There was nothing left over for\u00a0 messing about in boats and my parents had no interest in either adventure or boats.\u00a0 Or so I thought.
\nI occupied myself with mapping the locality from horseback, giving landmarks names that meant something to me.\u00a0 My Wildcat Island was Martingale Wood, the road up The Heap was Trotting Hill, Gravel Rash Lane was where I was once dragged with a foot caught in a stirrup.\u00a0 Gradually I built up a map of the lanes and fields that I hacked the horses around; it was almost ‘like’ an adventure made from the mundane.\u00a0 The Walker family would have smiled in recognition of the effort.<\/p>\n
It was not until I was 30 years old that I had the chance to go sailing.\u00a0 I’d visited a local sailing club and somehow decided that, despite the barrier of having no boat, no sailing skill, no contacts and no money I would one day sail my own boat.\u00a0 \u00a0A new direction in life meant that things would gradually begin to change and the Long Game began.<\/p>\n
Through friends in the village I managed to blag a berth on a small sailing boat with a retired RAF officer.\u00a0 The Rossiter Curlew he owned was a beauty of a boat, a 32-footer built on classical lines.\u00a0 I sailed with them a few times in the Solent, crossing to the Isle of Wight and one time setting out for France but we got buffeted uncomfortably that time and turned back.<\/p>\n
I decided that I needed a degree to further my prospects.\u00a0 A maths degree seemed appropriate since my late maths teacher had informed my parents that I would never get an A level in maths so there was an incentive to prove him wrong.\u00a0 I happened to pass the A level and subsequent studies in engineering gave me the maths credits needed to study teacher training with a maths specialism.<\/p>\n
You meet all sorts of people at university.\u00a0 One guy I met had his own yacht, a Westerly Konsort which he’d owned for a few years since living in the Channel Islands.\u00a0 Working as a carpet fitter, he’d made enough money to buy some property which he later sold for enough profit to fund the Konsort.\u00a0 He was a down-to-earth guy and one summer three of us set off from the River Yealm headed for Guernsey, Sark and eventually France.\u00a0 Adventure beckoned!<\/p>\n
I remember the dinghy ride out to the boat as clear as day (which it wasn’t – it was pre-dawn when we set off).\u00a0 The phosphorescence of the water made it look like silver dripping off the oars and my hands when I lifted them out of the river.\u00a0 It was enchanting, and when the yacht came into view she was a beauty which all .\u00a0 We got our gear aboard and left a passage plan in a nearby postbox, hauled the mooring strop aboard and off we sailed into the gathering dawn.\u00a0 Skipper Maurice established that I had sailed before (an indeterminate amount) and that our third crew member had never seen a boat before but likely could read a map.\u00a0 “See that light over there?” said Maurice, pointing at the loom of the Eddystone lighthouse which was still over the horizon.\u00a0 We nodded.\u00a0 “Don’t hit it.\u00a0 Steer this course and don’t wake me for another hour.\u00a0 I’m going to bed”.\u00a0 As he went below, the two of us wannabe sailors left on deck grinned nervously at each other and endeavoured to steer a straight course.\u00a0 We didn’t hit the Eddystone.\u00a0 The adventure had begun rather rapidly.<\/p>\n
For two or three summers we sailed Kishmul across the Channel and along the south coast.\u00a0 I was hooked on sailing but with other financial commitments I was so glad to be part of this crew, sailing on Maurice’s good will and getting loads of sea miles.\u00a0 Ultimately I took a Coastal Skipper course at night classes, becoming friends with the instructor who had been a navigator on a Whitbread 60 in the Round the World race and sailing with him occasionally on his yacht in North Wales.\u00a0 Years later I supplemented this with a Coastal Skipper practical course but life then intervened and my opportunities to go sailing dried up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I was about 11 when I first read Swallows and Amazons.\u00a0 Despite feeling no social connection at all with either the Swallows or the Amazons, I wanted to explore and map some part of the world.\u00a0 All the better if I could do it by sailboat.\u00a0 This was going to be unlikely though, with Shropshire<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-439","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelimpet.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/439","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelimpet.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelimpet.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelimpet.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelimpet.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=439"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/bluelimpet.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/439\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":450,"href":"https:\/\/bluelimpet.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/439\/revisions\/450"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelimpet.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=439"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}