One of the most formative books of my early years was Arthur Ransome’s sailing adventure for children of all ages, ‘Swallows and Amazons’.
I read this book so many times, and wore out at least two copies. I was so taken by this story that I wanted to be a Swallow. Or an Amazon. We struck a deal, my mother and I, that I would put forward half of the cost towards a sailing dinghy, and she would put the other half in.
For two years I worked my little backside off; jobs around the house, jobs up at the front-of-house of the family business, jobs at the back-of-house at another family business; I threw myself into everything. Almost every weekend and for every day in the school holidays for two years. I served petrol, worked in the shop serving customers with various non-food and foodstuffs, I cleaned out the PSV pits which was a really shitty job, I relined brake shoes, served exhaust systems to customers, helped fit exhaust systems, steam-generator cleaned the undersides of buses (also a really shitty job) and fitted tyres. I also did odd jobs on the agricultural estate/farm where we lived; baling and bale-hauling, and occasional other jobs.
Two years after the deal was struck and after much back-breaking (and, these days, illegal) labour, I took delivery of a GRP-built dinghy we’d bought from Exchange and Mart (ask your parents, kids).
Through the kind of jungle telegraph that can only exist in small, rural communities, we arranged to keep the dinghy at a farm, 2-1/4 miles away.
It might have been 2-1/4 miles from our house, but the farm was less than a hundred metres from the Monmouthshire and Brecon canal. I would get a lift to the farm early on Saturday and Sunday mornings. I would carry the dinghy on my back up to the canal, launch the boat and row up and down the canal as far as I could get in the day. At the end of the day I’d get back to the launch-point, pull the boat out of the water, carry it back down to the farm, and hang around, waiting for my lift to turn up.
The flaws in this cunning plan became obvious fairly quickly:
- The boat was heavy. Backbreakingly heavy
- It wasn’t a sailing dinghy. I had fallen short of the price of a sailing dinghy, and a GRP rowing dinghy was a poor compromise. But when you’re young you get blinded to the less attractive aspects of a compromise
- Although it’s incredibly pretty, constantly navigating the same stretches of the Mon and Brec by oar, became dull. To get around this I did camp out on a few occasions, pitching a tent on the non-towpath side of the canal, but the end result was the same, and
- Sometimes my lift home didn’t turn up. On more than one occasion I walked the 2-1/4 miles home
On the upside, I became quite a practised oarsman.
At one stage, during the mid-to-late 1980s, I bought a Practical Boat Owner, Sailing Today, Yachting World, and Yachting Monthly, every month, for several years. I read them from cover to cover and even read all the small ads and trade ads.
Eventually, after a reasonably moderate bonus from an employer, I bought a share in a boat. She was a French-built cruiser/racer, a Feeling 1040, but that didn’t work out for me, shared ownership just didn’t fit.
Fast forward about 125 years to today, and I am about to have another crack at the Swallows and Amazons thing.
I have just concluded the purchase of a boat. She’s a Sadler 32, she’s berthed in North Wales, her name is ‘Good Mood’. And she looks like this:
I’ve got a lot to (re)learn. I’ve been taking my RYA Day Skipper Theory classes, and I have been sitting my radio operator classes.
I’ve found an RYA instructor local to her berth who can give me ‘own boat’ tuition. The aim is that I get back to sailing proficiency and get to a level where I can sail the boat solo. And, the aim continues, we will use it for holidays, long/short breaks, even just for weekends. Cruising up and down the coast, or maybe hopping over to the Isle of Man, or even going over to Ireland, or up to Scotland, or over to/around Scandinavia…
All of these are possibles.
We’ll just see how it all pans out.
All that from a children’s book!
Nice looking boat, though. I’m sure you’ll have a lot of fun on that.
I used to be a Sea Cadet, but my love of the sea has long since gone.
I can still remember how to tie a clove hitch though, should you need it.
Next time I need a clove hitch I’ll give you a bell.
My favourite book was The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series. Still saving for that spaceship. Not been in boats much, but I do have a fond memory of very early on in the missus and my relationship when we were invited by (matchmaking) colleagues to stay at their lake “house” (it was their new section with a couple of tents on it) and we went out on their trailer sailer “Antares”. We had to motor out a fair way to catch enough breeze on this hot summer day, but once we were under sail it was magnificent. The best part was missus and I sitting up by the prow, toes dangling just above the water and barely a sound other than the lapping water.
Nice image