When Denny Desoutter and his team dropped PBO issue No. 1 onto the news stands in January 1967, I was already planning an ocean voyage in a small yacht. As is the wont of foolish dreamers at the age of 21. So I bought a copy.
It cost 3 shillings and 6 pence, or 18p in new money. Times have changed! There were 124 pages… what’s more the first 27 pages were 100% adverts apart from a half page listing the contents, the editor and assistant editor’s names and PBO’s London address. There was no sign of a phone number either at the front or on the Classified Ads order form at the back. Maybe this was normal 56 years ago?
At the time I did not have a boat suitable for crossing an ocean. But that could follow later. In the meantime, I was doing up an aged Yachting Monthly Senior (about 18ft long) and giving it a self-draining cockpit. Heaven knows what my poor parents thought when I announced that I aimed to sail this diminutive and aged plywood box single-handed across the Atlantic. To be frank, I didn’t really know how I was going to do it either. But later issues of PBO would hopefully show me affordable and practical equipment that would help me on my way.
As luck would have it, fate intervened in the form of a contemporary university chum called Tony Brunner who announced he’d like to come along. After just one year in a suit, he was bored with working for ICI; as was I with the daily trudge into Lloyds of London.
Bigger boat
The YM Senior was too small for two people so it was sold (to great parental relief) and we pooled resources, cashed in our embryo pension plans, sold our cars and bought a 25ft 1954 wooden cruiser called a Wind Elf Mk2.
Not the most exciting of names perhaps, but this chunky little 25-footer with her reverse sheer, low coachroof and elegant Alan Buchanan-designed lines looked the business. Had funds permitted, we’d have bought a Vertue or a van de Stadt-designed GRP Invicta (advertised in PBO issue No1). But we were on a tight budget, so the older wooden Wind Elf would have to do. And she did just fine.
The next job was to equip her for trans-oceanic travels. In those days, this did not involve a lot because – compared with todays again, I spotted the Seafarer Echosounder and Seafix RDF. In 1968 we invested in one of each, at around £28 (equivalent to £392 now according to the Bank of England’s inflation calculator) and £25 (= £350 now). Fifty-five years of inflation applied to these prices is scary. But then a pint of beer in 1968 cost just 13p! We bought a plastic sextant, which was about it in terms of navigation gear.
