Storms, sinkings, the South Seas….

Lord Stanley of Alderley embarks on an autumn cruise:

In the midst of this shrieking, dark inferno the mainsail came down with a run, giving me a smack on the side of the head from the gaff which made me reel. By the time I had struggled clear of the wet, heavy folds of canvas which covered the cockpit and were trailing over the side, I saw, by the light of my torch, O'Neill on his knees, clinging to the starboard rigging in an attitude of prayer.

Max Liberson wonders what he is doing:

The scene was breathtaking. My peaceful anchorage of a few hours before was now a maelstrom of white water. My lovely brass riding lamp (with a cheap LED camping light inside) was nicely illuminating the foredeck of Wendy May, my 1936 gaff cutter. I had a very few moments to get the jib down before it bust the furling line and unfurled, which could only cause severe damage. I managed it, and the potential disaster was averted.

As I stood there naked with the bullets of rain bouncing off my cold skin, I had a profound realisation: I was happy to be there.

Julian Blatchley prepares for his mate's ticket:

I came to the rite for my Second Mate's 'ticket' on the 21st of July, 1981. I was a very nervous young chap. The anxiety and my ability to remember the date are linked, because it was the last day of the third test against Australia, and I had wasted my last full day of revision watching Ian Botham plunder the bowling for 149, and my last morning of revision watching Bob Willis start to go through the Aussie top order. I had another reason to be queasy, too: an unknown examiner.

There were two examiners. One was supposed to be a good guy, and the other an ogre. In 1981 we were all much bucked to hear that the Ogre was stuck on a casualty investigation in the Caribbean, and expected the Good Guy. When the Monday of the first orals dawned, the examiner turned out to be a complete unknown. Examiners took four exams a day. On the Monday this chap failed all four candidates.

Jon Tucker falls asleep::

I discovered an uncharted island once. It was shortly after launching our home-built gaff ketch, back in the days when the sky wasn’t littered with satellites, and when hand-steering by compass was the norm on dead-reckoning passages.We had spent a busy sixty hours beating our way across a huge bight a hundred-odd miles offshore. With two waterspout sightings, and both mastheads glowing with St Elmo’s fire during the second night, sleep had been virtually impossible. By the third night I was exhausted to the point where I was beginning to have serious doubts about the reliability of my course and position. It seemed entirely obvious that the ship which crossed our path shortly after midnight must surely have been bound for the same destination as us. Navigation would now be simple, although a serious course alteration would be essential to follow its track, as our compass had obviously developed a startlingly big deviation.

Kit Africa delivers a ship – just:

The vibration was there in the background, like the buzzing of a very big fly on an enormous window. The captain and the first mate both had a fairly good idea of what was causing it. It had been a visiting engineer, who had repeatedly shifted the big Caterpillar engine ahead and then astern to clear the Tyne debris out of the propeller aperture while they lay at the quay. Soon they would be rid of him and under way across the Atlantic. But there was a series of little nicks out of the leading edge of one blade of the massive bronze propeller. As with most cascading problems at sea, this one started small. By the time it was noticeable, the ship was a long, long way from help.

Captain Klebingat reminisces about he Pacific in his own words:

The 5 mast schooner Crescent, now. The masters name was Theordore Olsen a long lanky man more of a Downeaster than a Norwegian. Hungry Olsen he was known by, and he would have been a hard case if he dared to. He had a glass eye, and if I did not produce enough, he used to stare at me, but it may have been with the glass eye, at that. 'Labor Day you say it is? So we labor to-day,' he said, when we drew his attention to the fact that it was a holiday. Mrs Olsen had only contempt for the man before the mast, she it was who had the keyes to the Store-Room, you can imagine what an ordeal it was to her, when she had to obey the call of nature in front of the crew. They held a blanket in front of her, in a case like that. But at any rate it affected her mind, and she was a patient in a sanatorium off and on. She was known amongst seafarers in general as the Norwegian Queen.

Nicholas Gray tells the story of the Hillyard:

As in any multi-faceted operation, individuals could get very jealous about their contribution and there was, at times, real rivalry between different sections. It tells us something about Hillyard as a man that he was able to hold them all together to produce the results that they did. They worked hard in those days and enjoyed it. Tom Jeffers remembered that when two men had to rip a plank with handsaws they would begin at each end, putting a sixpenny piece in the middle. The first one there pocketed it. Or two pairs, working each side of a boat, would vie with one another as to how many planks they could fit in a day, with the apprentices trying to run the skilled men into the ground.

Dave Johnston rescues a famous pilot cutter from dereliction:

Keith, Jack and I were sitting in a pub looking at pictures of Major H W Tilman's yacht Mischief and planning adventures. After the third pint we decided to get a boat and go off sailing the seven seas. We started scanning the 'for sales' in the back pages of the yachting magazines and driving around the boatyards. In one yard in Portsmouth – a breaker's yard, really - we found tied up to the jetty a 52ft yacht. She was flush-decked in pitch pine, with a deep cockpit just big enough for two or three. Down below was like stepping back into the 1900s. Against the main bulkhead where the mast came down to the keelson was a potbellied stove. Forward of this was the sleeping cabin with three bunks, and a tiny compartment with the oldest loo I had ever seen. Beyond the forward bulkhead was a workbench with a vice and tool racks along the sides.

We clambered all over her, falling in love.

H V Morton sailed with Hilaire Belloc:

Belloc had a second boat, an extraordinary sort of tub, which he occasionally took out. It was said that when the wind blew this strange craft moved sideways across the water. She was at this time at Littlehampton, and one Sunday at King's Land after Mass, Belloc said: 'We'll go to Littlehampton and bring the Dreadnought - that was her proud name - 'up river to Arundel. There's a man there who will look after her.' So off to Littlehampton we went, found the Dreadnought, hoisted sail, and set out to negotiate the tricky reaches and curves of the Arun. I tried to do what I was told, but somewhere near Ford we ran aground. We got overboard and endeavoured to push her clear, but she was firmly wedged in the mud, so we sat in a meadow and smoked, waiting for the tide to lift her off. Towards evening we grew tired of waiting. We set off across the fields, and went to Benediction in St Philip Neri, and then to the hotel by the bridge in Arundel, after arranging with a man in the town to rescue the Dreadnought and bring her up the river.

Ian Nicolson discusses the 'Six':

The Berthon Boat Company, then as now based in Lymington, designed and started to build the West Solent One Design. These yachts, slightly shorter than a typical ‘Six’ at 34ft 4 inches, were intended to give the superb racing enjoyed by the ‘Sixes’ at far less cost. They were one-designs, all identical, so one set of moulds and patterns could be used for every yacht in the class. In contrast, every ‘Six’ had to have its own set of building moulds and its own ballast-keel pattern, a large, oddly-shaped chunk of wood used to cast the lead keel. The patterns and moulds were useless once the ‘Six’ was built, so they were cut up and used to stoke the wood-burning stoves in the building sheds in winter.

The West Solents' relative cheapness was attractive to owners, and to wives and girlfriends because they had basic accommodation. There was a loo in the rather small cabin and even a simple galley, so they could be used for weekend cruising as well as racing.

The loos were made by the famous wholesale chandlery firm of Simpson Lawrence, based in Glasgow, a city with its own patois. The Glasgow for loo is 'cludgy', and it was not long before jealous people soon started to call the West Solents the Cludgy Class.

James Long investigates new age wind power:

As the world has become aware of the pressures of climate change and pollution, international shipping companies have faced unpalatable truths. Perhaps the most startling formulation appears in a 2009 report which revealed that just fifteen very large container ships were producing the same total emissions as every car in the entire world. Mounting international pressure is pushing shipowners towards a rethink. A fresh look at wind as a power source ranks high in their list of new approaches.

Richard Crockatt remembers the Hiscocks:

Hiscock had spent the previous winter planning a cruise to Scotland. Inspired by the adventures of John Buchan’s Richard Hannay, he proposed to sail from his home port of Yarmouth, Isle of Wight, to the wild and remote Loch Scavaig in Skye, location of key scenes in Mr Standfast. He was thirty years old, single, already an experienced cruising sailor, an established contributor to the yachting press, and author of a cruising guide to the southwest of Ireland. His boat was the 24ft engineless gaff-rigged cutter Wanderer II, designed in 1937 by Laurent Giles with lines very similar to those of the slightly bigger Vertue, whose first incarnation, Andrillot, was already under construction. Hiscock could not afford the bigger boat, so Giles drew a smaller version to suit his pocket. He had four months cruising time ahead of him. He could just as well work on the book he was writing on board as ashore. Thus began a pattern as cruising sailor and author which carried him through till the end of his life in 1986.

and of course there are Flotsam and Jetsam, books, the inimitable drawings of Claudia Myatt, the reprehensible musings of Ray Doggett, fresh breezes, salt air, peace, violence, and the rest of life at sea….