A mature approach

Some of us know what it’s like. You get up in the morning and look in the mirror and wonder who that old person is looking back at you. I thought growing old would take longer but I do know that my muscles and joints ache in places I didn’t know I had. I know my reflexes aren’t what they used to be.

I’ve got a bit of tendonitis in some joints and a bad back from a rugby injury long ago and a dodgy knee from falling off a motorbike. I breathe a lot harder after winching in the genoa or putting a slab in the main. And don’t talk to me about short-term memory loss or I’ll forget what I’m scribbling down here.

You can’t escape the demographics. When I look around the shoreside bars and clubs there are not too many young faces there. These are the SKI generation, ‘spend the kid’s inheritance’, and now the kids have left home, home itself has been rented out or sold or downsized, the oldies have cut the knots holding them to the old life and are afloat and on the loose. Most of the new young blood coming into yachting seems