Skipper’s View

at the Cannes Boat Show, followed by a full day of strolling the pontoons at the Southampton Boat Show, I was feeling just a hint of bling overload. Don’t get me wrong, the yachts on show are all very impressive - a Nicholson 32. is a lovely boat, but somehow looked out of place in the environs of the boat show. I knew the yacht well from my time keeping a boat at Paynes Boatyard in Prinsted, Chichester. was there, too, and her skipper, Tony Curphey, was surely one of the most extraordinary sailors I’d ever met. With most of us, you ask, ‘Where are you cruising this summer?’ and they perhaps say the Channel Islands, perhaps Ireland, for a truly adventurous sailor. Yet, when you asked Tony, he would generally say something like, ‘Well, I was thinking of heading to New Zealand. I'll aim to be back in Prinsted next summer’. Now, we have all met dreamers in every boatyard who talk of setting off around the world. About 9 times out of 10, the boat never goes anywhere. Yet, Tony was a dreamer of the day and, sure enough, he would head off down to the Southern Ocean, do a circuit of the globe and return to Prinsted. He did all of this solo, incidentally, and on a shoestring budget. The other remarkable thing was his modesty: no hubris, just a casual mention of where he’d been. Anyway, he had been invited to Southampton on behalf of the Nicholson 32 Association, and I can’t think of a better advert for the yacht. Anyway, I just thought I would mention Tony as, for all ther glitz of boat shows, there is another side to cruising and maybe Tony personifies the very best of that. I thought his tale also tied in rather nicely with the shoestring sailors crossing the channel on p34 of this issue. It’s a trip full of dare, youthful optimism and, oddly, a similar sense of understated adventure.