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

Published by Adlard Coles Nautical
an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
50 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3DP
www.adlardcoles.com

This electronic edition published in 2013 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

Copyright Yachting Monthly 2000

First edition published 2000
Reprinted 2002, 2006, 2008
Reissued 2009

Print ISBN 978-1-4081-1639-5
ePub ISBN 9781-4729-0167-5
ePDF ISBN 9781-4729-0168-2

All rights reserved
You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

The right of the author to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Note: while all reasonable care has been taken in the publication of this book, the publisher takes no responsibility for the use of the methods or products described in the book.while all reasonable care has been taken in the publication of this book, the publisher takes no responsibility for the use of the methods or products described in the book.

Visit www.bloomsbury.com to find out more about our authors and their books. You will find extracts, author interviews, author events and you can sign up for newsletters to be the first to hear about our latest releases and special offers.

I MUST CONFESS

Yachting Monthly readers include policemen, princes, nurses, chefs, judges, priests and postmen. They drive trains, produce films and offer bank loans. In addition to boats, their interests range from agriculture to archaeology. They share the common denominators of sailing and a wry sense of humour.

An editors job is to find out who and what they are and what moves them. Club bar encounters and scads of letters made me suspect a shared urge to confess their maritime sinsa process rich with possibilities for artistic interpretation.

I recalled the kindly old Irish priest of my childhood and the dusty darkness of the confessional: Yeve done none of dem tings my son, he would sigh. Away wid ye and say tree Hail Marys.

So I donned my biretta and waited. The response from readers was instant and gratifying. Readers beat their breasts with enthusism and confessed with total abandon.

Only pompous humbugs who are never wrong eschew the Confessional. They crawl dripping from their latest cock-ups, blaming everybody from the ships cat upwards and everything from magnetic anomoly to potted shrimps. The Confessional is one of Yachting Monthlys much-loved fixtures. If ever it is axed it will be when readers stop confessingand pigs fly.

DES SLEIGHTHOLME

EDITOR OF YACHTING MONTHLY FROM 1967-1984

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 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 the cartoon for the best Confession each month in Yachting Monthly.

PAUL GELDER

DEPUTY EDITOR

About eight nights out from Falmouth, heading towards San Miguel during the 1979 Azores and Back race, my father and I were becoming disenchanted with drifting around at less than one knot and very much in need of reassurance that we were not the last boat in the race nor indeed the only boat in the world. What a night: no moon, more stars than you could believe; it would have been superb if only we had been moving faster.

Look at that! said my father, pointing to a bright light very low on the horizon and so clear that you felt you could reach out and touch it.

It must be a white navigation light on another boat, I said. But it must be very close.

We were so uplifted by the thought of another boat nearby that we started blowing our foghorn and making as much noise as possible in order to attract the attention of the people on board.

After several minutes of shouting and blowing, we decided that the light had to be a masthead light as we were now looking up towards it. Strangely, though, we could see nothing of the boat itself and we reckoned we had to be less than 100 yards apart. We seemed to be getting nearer all the time, judging by the elevation of the light, but never quite catching up.

You have all heard of people having mental problems during long voyages; you have probably all heard of dogs that bark at the moon...This is the first time I have ever admitted that I spent a small part of my life shouting and blowing a foghorn at Venus. Bernard Kerrison

Being married to an ardent, if inexperienced sailing enthusiast, for the past year I have tried to overcome my fear and taken to the water in our 25ft Westerly Tiger.

Many a wonderful day, I admit, I have spent bobbing about the Solent enjoying the scenery, the sun and the light winds. If this be sailing, Im converted!

On one particular balmy day, I had taken the helm while my husband was, it seemed to me, fussing about with the sails: first sheeting in and then easing out, tightening this, loosening that, looking to the sky and then down to the sea. Why doesnt he go and do something useful, I thought, like put the kettle on.

Suddenly I saw a look of consternation in his face, for astern and gradually creeping up on us was another Westerly Tiger displaying its cruising chute in magnificent glory. In no time at all it had caught us up, and then, to my husbands horror, overtaken us. I knew he was going to suggest that we set a similar sail.

Have you ever put this sail up before? I asked rather nervously; I couldnt help noticing the way he was looking at the other boat and mentally taking notes. In what seemed a trice, the sail went up, the wind billowing it outI was impressed!

Sheet in, sheet in, S-h-e-e-t in! he yelled, NOW!

Too late, the sail was becoming well and truly wrapped, like an hour-glass, around the forestay. Oh my God, I heard him say. Quick, steer to starboard. I did so, but turning into the wind seemed to make matters worse as the sail started to twist faster and faster around the stay until it was tightly entwined.