FROM A PAINTED SHIP, A PAINTED SEA

We ran up the English Channel ploughing a foam path through iridescent green seas, our swelling white sails rolling past purple, mauve and brown-stained chalk cliffs, under grey and black clouds. Such attention to colour had become second nature to me having spent the past three days with marine artist Martyn Mackrill aboard his 1910-built gaff cutter Nightfall.

The Royal Yacht Squadron’s Honorary Painter was on passage to the East Coast from his pontoon berth in Yarmouth, Isle of Wight, to seek out new hues in the waters and big skies of East was rebuilt in the Isle of Wight by former Lallows shipwright Charlie Gladys, who was with us for the passage east.