Paul Gelder - Yachting Monthlys Further Confessions: Yachtsmen Own Up to Their Sailing Sins

Sailing is a great leveller. Faced with a dragging anchor, a stranded or sinking boat or the perils of going aloft, the expertise of any sailor, whether an experienced Yachtmaster or a humble buoy-hopping day sailor, can be tested to the limits. In such situations, a wry sense of humour is often as useful as an RYA certificate.

It was Des Sleightholmes idea to launch The Confessional column in Yachting Monthly, back in 1983, a year before he retired as editor. Every yachtsman who ever went to sea, he mused has, somewhere, a skeleton hiding in his cupboard, an incident he would rather forget but which still preys upon his conscience.

How prescient he was. Readers clamoured to own up to their most embarrassing moments. For over 20 years, The Confessional has become one of the first pages that readers turn to each month. Weve seen it all: liferafts that turned into death rafts, outboards that fell overboard, leading lights that drove away, bowsprits used in jousting matches - real-life cock-ups stranger than any fiction... and all with the chilling unspoken postscript, there but for the grace of God go I.

In this sequel to the first successful collection of the best of The Confessional, a new host of nautical mishaps require you to suspend belief. Experience is the name we give to our mistakes, said Oscar Wilde. But why not learn from the mistakes of others? Why be a sinner when you can be so saintly? Wouldnt it be churlish to ignore such cautionary tales from such selfless confessors? Read on and let incompetence be your instructor afloat.

PAUL GELDER

DEPUTY EDITOR , YACHTING MONTHLY

For many years the much sought after prize for those brave enough to publicly confess their sailing sin was an original Peyton cartoon. Mike Peyton, a writer as well as cartoonist, is sometimes known as the Giles of the sailing scene. His keen eye for humour afloat has inspired 17 books of cartoons and some 2000 Confessional cartoons.

Mike has owned 13 boats, from a Folkboat to a Dutch botter, and three ferrocement boats, Brimstone, Lodestone and (his latest) Touchstone, a 38ft (11.6m) ketch. There is no truth to the rumour that his next boat will be called Tombstone.

Mikes cartoons have been published in sailing magazines from Yokohama to Yarmouth. He lives on the East Coast in Fambridge, on the River Crouch, and still draws cartoons for the best Confession each month in Yachting Monthly.

Further Confessions

Back in the mid-1950s, I was fortunate - and amazed - to find myself skippering a crew of school and work friends aboard the Bristol Channel Pilot Cutter Hirta.

Our midsummer cruise took us first to Ostend. In those days, Hirta had a petrol/paraffin (TVO = tractor vaporising oil) Gray engine, with a huge thirst and many other problems. Needing more fuel, the large crew formed up with jerrycans lashed to oars and marched to the nearest filling station.

Three hundred litres de para-fine, sil vous plat? They didnt understand.

Three hundred litres de tay-vay-oh? I tried again. Same response.

I knew it wasnt benzine. Impasse. The crew shifted impatiently, mindful of the fact that the bars were opening.

Then an old gentleman who spoke some English came across and asked if he could help. I tried to explain about the paraffin; he suggested we try a shop down a side street and told me to ask for something by a word I didnt recognise and cant now remember.

Off marched the scruffy crocodile to arrive outside a small shop with a window display consisting of some faded papers and innumerable dead flies. On my request for 300 litres of (the word I cant remember), the owner peered sadly over his glasses at the line of crew bearing jerrycans on oars.

Turning back to me, he asked, Monsieur, they are all constipated? Mark Grimwade

Picture the scene: it is a warm summers evening at the Folly Inn, in Cowes, Isle of Wight. We are enjoying a pre-dinner glass of wine with our friends, Derek and Barbara, on their Moody 35. They had motored here two days earlier on glassy seas after attempting to sail from the Hamble. As we sipped our wine and enjoyed the tranquil surroundings, the only slight annoyance was a squeaking noise from the rigging. Derek adjusted the halyards, inspected fenders, and tightened a rope here and there, but the squeak persisted. It seemed to get worse whenever the mainsail cover was touched.

Sounds like a bird, I said.

Derek peered into the end of the sail cover.

My god it is! he exclaimed. There are faces looking at me!

Inside the sail was a nest with four hungry birds chirping for food. What to do now?

Thoughts of going back to the mooring on the Hamble were mooted, but would the parents still be around after two days? Derek decided to phone the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds on his mobile phone. We were told there was no RSPB officer on the island. It was suggested that we try the RSPCA instead.

The mobile phone battery was now low, and there were mutterings of this is costing a fortune! before, finally, a friendly voice agreed he could come to investigate.

The twittering of the birds was now loud and urgent. They hadnt been fed for two days. At last, the nest was removed, and the birds identified as pied wagtails. The RSPCA man took them off with a promise of mealworms.

The thought of the sail being hoisted didnt bear thinking about. And the name of Dereks boat? Magic Flute! Opera buffs will know that it features the birdcatcher, Papageno. Enid Croft

I was in love again. I had first seen her when I was in Mull some 30 years before. She, riding her pony, had disturbed the deer and ruined our days sport.

Years later, we met again at the funeral of a mutual friends father, and one thing led to another. I had a spare few days and proposed a sailing trip on the Norfolk Broads. I borrowed a sailing cruiser and we set off from Horning on a blissful evening, running with wind against tide past all the thatched riverside houses, towards St Benets ruined Abbey. All very Arthur Ransome!

We stopped and moored for the night. We were the only people there. I woke early and went up on deck, leaving my new-found love in her bunk. I hoisted the sails, let go the mooring lines and pushed off. Except I didnt make it back on to the boat, and dived awkwardly into the water.

After a while the sound of flapping sails made it obvious to her that something was not quite right. It was only when she looked up and saw I was not in the cockpit that my strangled cries revealed - I was in the water.

She sprang into action. She leapt on deck stark naked. At which point, the only motor cruiser I had ever seen on the Broads before noon came out of the dyke.