the salty road to freedom
~ pilot cutters to high-performance cruisers,
journalism, books, film ~
and the sea…
I’ve been Mate on a coasting merchant ship and run yachts for gentlemen. I’ve operated charter boats, delivered all sorts of vessels, raced at quite high levels and have been teaching sailing intermittently for thirty-plus years. I’ve been a Yachtmaster Examiner since 1978.
Classics have been my passion and for forty years I owned wooden gaffers. My wife Roz and I have sailed them all over the Atlantic, from southern Brazil to Iceland and from the Caribbean to Russia, with a number of trips to the US and Canada thrown in. I love traditional craft, but now I’ve finally gone bermudan. I’m happy sailing anything though that does the job properly. I’ve no time for boats that go sideways.
A correspondent from Canada has written to remind me of that wonderful book, ‘Two Years Before The Mast’ by Richard Henry Dana. This was originally published in 1840 and was the first book penned from the point of view of a common seaman. It tells of his treacherous voyage around Cape Horn to the newly discovered wilds of California. It became a huge hit in its day and is still a grand read today.
more...Use these only when you really need them, not as a matter of course, because they have a bad habit of causing trouble, especially if rigged through a ring.
more...