Reading these columns, a few of you may have the impression of some leathery old salt, rarely ashore, twinkling across the foredeck with brine in her hair, her mind constantly…

Anchorages

‘The rain it raineth every day.’ So sang Feste, Shakespeare’s wise old clown, probably describing the state of affairs in Illyria some time around 1600. I suspect, though, that he…

Dick Durham

There are any number of DIY weather forecasting manuals and all of them train us up the same way. There’s the overview: the plan of a weather system with its…

Dick Durham

Some sailors leave me feeling distinctly uncomfortable; they leave me with a sneaking suspicion that I haven’t sailed far enough, that I’m too comfortable in home waters, that I’m a…

Anchorages

I’m curious about the way my attitude to weather and forecasting has changed over the years. I’ll never forget being trapped in Cherbourg in a 32-foot wooden gaff cutter with…

A fine idea this month, for YM to warn about The Shock Of The Big (p34). It is easy to to think that a roomier, faster, grander boat is always…

Tom Cunliffe

Have you noticed the way the world seems to spin a lot faster in the first few hours after returning from a cruise? It struck me hard when I came…

Dick Durham

There is a cartoon drawn by Mike Peyton that sticks in my mind. Two boats are sailing abeam from an anchorage in light conditions. The helmsman of the one nearest…

I wrote a novel years ago, Casting Off, in which a furious wife, at the end of a scratchy weekend a deux, watches her husband carrying his bag up the…

Tom Cunliffe

“The true peace of God begins at any spot a thousand miles from the nearest land” One of my favourite quotes is from Joseph Conrad. ‘The true peace of God…