Libby Purves

  • June 27, 2016

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…

  • May 31, 2016

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…

  • May 12, 2016

Years ago when we were young, we went to a few yacht club meets in our Contessa 26, Barnacle Goose. All the other boats were much bigger and grander, with…

  • April 6, 2016

North or South, that is the question: whether ’tis nobler in the yachtsman to seek the sleet and icebergs of outrageous Northlands? Or to bare arms upon a sea of…

  • April 5, 2016

I have been brooding about harbours, what we cruising yachtsmen want and what we ought to tell the industry, our local authorities and tourist authorities abroad. Yachts and ‘leisure boating’…

  • January 30, 2016

It’s been like hospital visiting, this winter. Major abdominal surgery, complications, expert consultants called in, conferences about treatment plans, unfamiliar parts exposed, stiff upper lips necessary all round. Not anyone in…

  • November 26, 2015

Some gloomy health charity informs us that one in three of us will face dementia. The figures were picked up, crunched, explained and debunked on that magnificent BBC Radio 4…

  • October 19, 2015

Reading these columns, a few of you may have the impression of some leathery old salt, rarely ashore, twinkling across the foredeck with brine in her hair, her mind constantly…

  • August 20, 2015

A fine idea this month, for YM to warn about The Shock Of The Big (p34). It is easy to to think that a roomier, faster, grander boat is always…

  • June 26, 2015

I wrote a novel years ago, Casting Off, in which a furious wife, at the end of a scratchy weekend a deux, watches her husband carrying his bag up the…