Skipper’s View

with the environment and I must admit that with every year that rolls around it seems to become more vital. Sailors themselves are something of a contradiction when it comes to matters of the environment. After all, we are very strong the ever switching breezes into my intinerary. On the final day of my trip, in need of getting back, I eventually fired up the motor in despair and pounded into a short chop on a close reach for eight hours straight. End of experiment. Yet perhaps the most stark illustration of the worrying impact that even we well meaning sailors can have came many years ago when I moved my boat to a very cheap, very run down marina in Chichester. The marina had been slightly neglected for a number of years and rather sad old boats had gathered in the yard to die. It was absolute heaven to be honest and you could kill hours looking at all the gently decaying boats and speculating on their slow fall from grace. I did, however, understand when the new owner decided to have a clear out. He started with the wooden boats and it was soul destroying to watch them being chopped up and burnt. Yet progress was quick. Next came the fibreglass wrecks; much chainsawing and fibreglass splinters later and the marina owner was left with an unpleasant pile of plastic which then had to go to landfill. It was a stark demonstration of just how difficult it is to destroy plastic boats. Progress is being made and the sooner boat