Cruising life

  • June 27, 2016

It was a particularly vile, early-season shakedown passage to Ostend. We crossed a North Sea which threw up its trademark jerky, irregular grey-brown chop: we hammered hard on the wind…

Tom Cunliffe

  • June 27, 2016

Life used to be so simple, didn’t it! It wasn’t all roses though. Back in the days before the general comforts of electronics, I had a few bad trips in…

  • June 21, 2016

I doubt that the Natural Environment Research Council realised what a furore they would raise when they decided to hold a national vote to find a name their new £200m…

  • June 14, 2016

Flaming June has arrived on our doorsteps – and what wonderful weather it’s been! Before the weekend my surgery fans were running flat out and all we could do was…

  • June 7, 2016

A few years ago I updated my ageing Avon Redstart in favour of a Tinker Tramp inflatable dinghy. Whilst I loved the Avon, and still do (it now lives in…

Tom Cunliffe

  • May 31, 2016

I have a charcoal filter on the foot-powered drinking-water pump in my galley. It normally catches everything and I never suffer a bad cup of tea. At Easter, I was…

  • May 31, 2016

Good to have the pilotage notes on going round Land’s End (p40). No headland is without its nervous moments, especially with cliffs involved, and off-lying rocks suggesting that the land…

Dick Durham

  • May 31, 2016

Most people don’t ‘get’ Roger D Taylor. At one time, blinded by sunny photographs of exotic ports in over-written pilot books, nor did I. Roger sails round in ever-increasing circles…

  • May 31, 2016

At the end of last season I snapped our wooden flagstaff when using it as a handhold coming up the stern ladder from the dinghy. It is in a slightly…

  • May 24, 2016

I’m beginning to feel my age. At 58, I feel a little aggrieved at getting arthritis, but I have to remind myself that as a GP I daily see patients…