About

Sailing my Albacore "El Avispa" Off Pentewan
Cornwall c 1970.

For "about the boat" see page "Sancerre" which is more interesting than about me 😀.

Officially I learnt to sail in 1967 at "Crab Surl’s" sailing school at Emsworth, but I had been "mucking about in boats" for a couple of years before that. 

I quickly progressed from the Mirror Dinghy I built in the dinning room in the winter of 1967/8 to an Albacore, 505 and then a Unicorn "A" Class" catamaran, and much, much later a Laser. But most of my competitive dinghy sailing was in usually winning RAF and Joint Services sailing teams from 1975 through 1981 in Albacores, Enterprises, Bosuns and Sea View Mermaid 3 man keelboats.

I got involved in the RYA training scheme and by 1977 was a RYA Dayboat Coach / Examiner (now the more PC term "assessor"), teaching and examining up to Senior Instructor level and doing a bit of youth race training for the sports council.

And off Lyme Regis where she was based at about the same time.
A post card from the time, copywrite unknown.

Meanwhile I started offshore sailing in the early 70's privately on a Hustler 30 out of Bridlington and on RAFSA and Joint Services boats ranging from an S&S 34 to Nicolson 55's to pre-war windfall boats.

 

"Sperling" off St Mawes, 1974. Build to the 50 sq m rule in the 1930s
for the Luftwaffe and "liberated" by the RAF in 1945. Along with
a lot of others euphemistically known as  "Windfall" boats by the
three services who ran some of them well into the 1980s.

Hustler 30, "Jolly Miller" in Ijmuiden on route to Amsterdam
after a very wet race from Hartlepool 1975 

Black Arrow, I was to get my Yachtmaster
(offshore) ticket on her in 1978.
pic credit unknown.

The RAF Sailing Association's UFO34 "Black Arrow" was named for treble one squadron. We took her to the 1977 3/4 Ton Cup and two of us had an "interesting time" bringing her back from Las Rochelle to Gosport with no self steering in a boat set up for a crew of six, my first experience of short handed offshore sailing. 

Here I am sitting on the rail of Brian and Pam Saffrey-Cooper's half tonner "Green Dragon" during the 1979 Round the Island Race when we won our division. She was an incredibly successful racing boat winning the Royal Ocean Racing Club "Yacht of the Year" award in 79, plus for three years running from 78 the RORC divisional championship, the Solent Points series and the British Level Rating Association's Saturday and Sunday Series. I ran the foredeck and was relief navigator and 2nd change helm for the first two years.

After the 79 Half Ton Cup, having got married, I backed off of international level competition concentrating on teaching both dayboats and offshore and on occasion skippering Black Arrow in races, but I got dragged back in 2020 to help Brian qualify "Jade" for the one ton Cup and again in 1981 to help qualify "Dragon" for the Admiral's Cup, again running the foredeck. Unfortunately I did not have leave available to sail in the event itself.

Brian and Pam's 1 tonner (40ft), "Dragon", one of the three boats
winning the Admiral's cup for Britain.

Pre start checks in the syndicates DR400.

Through the 80's, once I had "a proper job" having left the RAF, I did less and less sailing, back to dinghy's and then in the 1990's largely gave up the Laser (a hideously uncomfortable boat) for windsurfing. In 2002 I stopped sailing almost completely in favour of flying - one only has so much time and money.

Then in 2017 I bought Sancerre, and as they say, the rest is history with c 20k solo miles under my belt.

At the start of the 79 Jester Challenge, pic by John Willis.