PUMPING IRON

These days as I put to sea in my modern classic Mason 44, I feel I’m leading a sheltered life. Unless she decides – for whatever obscure reason governs her plastic soul – to syphon in a quick bilge-full through one of her many pumps, she sails dry, top and bottom. Life hasn’t always been like this.

When I retired at 35 from my job as an examiner at the Cowes National Sailing Centre in 1983, Ros and I sold our home on the Isle of Wight and invested the equity in , a 1911 Bristol Channel pilot cutter lying in Tarbert, Loch Fyne. We took delivery early in the year with the idea of sailing her down to the island to fit her out for ocean voyaging. Although she had been yachting since 1920