IT’S NEVER PLAIN SAILING
he plan was simple, as I went over it in my head on the Red Jet to, zoom away from the quayside, then have him push me into the sea, with the words “It just isn’t your day, is it?” This will sound insane if you’re not familiar with the chase scene in where Sean Connery drives a Fairey Huntress away from the baddies pursuing him in ‘Huntsmen’. We were planning to re-enact the start of that scene with Josh, dressed in a suit with yachting cap, pushing me (dressed in a sense of hopelessness and a plastic moustache) off the boat and roaring away, with a drone filming. Then one of the boat’s two diesels gave up. It’s never plain sailing, is it? Even when you’re not sailing. The actual sailing, despite the light winds, was magnificent. The sun was out and Cowes felt like Cowes again, humming from high street to waterfront. It’s the sort of place where land-based things, to paraphrase Arthur Ransome, seem barely to matter at all.
