CAPTAIN SLOW BUYS A BOAT

For a brief period back in the 1980s James May and I used to work together. James was the production editor of Autocar magazine and I was selling adverts for a sister title called Car Choice. It didn’t end well. Car Choice closed – I never was any good at sales. And James got sacked. At least he went in style; while sub-editing a supplement, he changed the first word of every article so that the capital letter at the start of every page spelled out a witty little message. We thought it was hilarious. Our managing director didn’t and fired him on the spot. Thankfully, James found a more appreciative audience for his famously dry sense of humour presenting Top Gear and I ended up scribbling about boats for a living.

Despite our divergent career paths, we have stayed in touch over the years so it didn’t come as a huge surprise when a message popped up on my phone from James in 2013. It simply read, “I have been gripped by the desire to buy a Riva Junior. Is this a crap idea?”

I was tempted to give an equally succinct answer but as it happened I was sea-trialling a classic Riva Tritone in Italy at the time and was able to ask the people who