Tom Cunliffe
“I’d love to go sailing like you do,” gushed a land-locked lady I met at a publisher’s cocktail party in Bloomsbury. She seemed a nice girl, but she obviously didn’t get out much. “Travel is so noisy,” she continued. “It must be magical to waft along in silence like that!”
“Like what?” I wondered, helping her to a bite-sized vegan tartlet. The only time sailing is silent is when the sea’s flat, there’s no motorboat wash, and a steady 10 knots is blowing from just forward of the beam. Or, you could say, with similar frequency to a snowball-fight in hell.
Scratch it where you like, yachting is a boisterous business. Given a modest passage-making breeze and waves to go with it, the crockery rattles in its stowage bins, the anchor chain scuffles in its navel pipe, the watch below snores and the rudder emits an
