Before cartoonist Mike Peyton sold his home-made 38ft concrete ketch, Touchstone, he could invariably be found aboard her frying up Spam sandwiches on a coal stove, waiting for the tide to unstick her from the glutinous mud of the River Blackwater at the Dickensian Downes Road Boatyard, Maldon.

His was not the sort of sailing which showed up as a target on the radar of the Royal Cruising Club. But all sailors great and small are levelled by humour. And now at the grand old age of 91 he has finally been recognised by the UK’s grandest sailing club.

For more than 60 years he has been calamity’s witness afloat and the worried faces of his subjects have looked just as crestfallen beneath cheese-cutters as bobble hats, when their sailing has caught them out. Now the RCC are to honour him with an award for services to yachting.

He and his wife, Kath, the best-selling author of the Flambards series of teenage horse-riding action books, will put on their best bib and tucker for the award ceremony to be held at the RCC annual dinner on 1 March at the Royal Thames Yacht Club in London’s Knightsbridge.

Picture courtesy of: Peyton, the World’s Greatest Sailing Cartoonist,by Dick Durham, published by Adlard Coles Nautical.