So, the die is cast and the country has voted to leave the EU. After months of media hype and disinformation I had naively hoped that after the event we…
Cruising life
Libby Purves August 2016 Podcast
It was a particularly vile, early-season shakedown passage to Ostend. We crossed a North Sea which threw up its trademark jerky, irregular grey-brown chop: we hammered hard on the wind…
Tom Cunliffe Summer 2016 Podcast
Life used to be so simple, didn’t it! It wasn’t all roses though. Back in the days before the general comforts of electronics, I had a few bad trips in…
Jonty Pearce: Boaty McBoatface
I doubt that the Natural Environment Research Council realised what a furore they would raise when they decided to hold a national vote to find a name their new £200m…
Jonty Pearce: It’s regatta time!
Flaming June has arrived on our doorsteps – and what wonderful weather it’s been! Before the weekend my surgery fans were running flat out and all we could do was…
Jonty Pearce: Tinkering about
A few years ago I updated my ageing Avon Redstart in favour of a Tinker Tramp inflatable dinghy. Whilst I loved the Avon, and still do (it now lives in…
Tom Cunliffe July 2016 podcast
I have a charcoal filter on the foot-powered drinking-water pump in my galley. It normally catches everything and I never suffer a bad cup of tea. At Easter, I was…
Libby Purves July 2016 Podcast
Good to have the pilotage notes on going round Land’s End (p40). No headland is without its nervous moments, especially with cliffs involved, and off-lying rocks suggesting that the land…
Dick Durham July 2016 Podcast
Most people don’t ‘get’ Roger D Taylor. At one time, blinded by sunny photographs of exotic ports in over-written pilot books, nor did I. Roger sails round in ever-increasing circles…
Jonty Pearce: Fun with flags
At the end of last season I snapped our wooden flagstaff when using it as a handhold coming up the stern ladder from the dinghy. It is in a slightly…