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It is very sad to report the death of Rees Martin, who died suddenly form a massive stroke on Saturday 20th February 2021, writes Dan Houston. Rees was well known to classic sailors as one of the founders of Cowes Classics Week. He was also a past secretary of the British International Six Metre Association [...]
Channel 5's Britain by Boat has so far not really lived up to expectations. It features the veteran BBC newsreader Michael Buerk and John Sergeant, the Beeb's long term (1992 to 2000) chief political correspondent taking off around the coast in the Ashley Butler Mayflower 50 design Bonaventure. Both newsmen have previously done "some yachting". [...]
It's been great to sail aboard the 1984 28ft Heard cutter Isabel in the Sussex Yacht Club pursuit series of races this year. Owner Aidan Tuckett, a former wooden boat sailor, recently bought the boat and has been enjoying the sometime novelty of being able to sail whenever he likes, with a well found GRP [...]
It's been bad news for the Golden Globe sailors as two of the leading boats were rolled and dismasted 40 nM apart in a storm on Friday. Gregor McGuckin and Abhilash Tomy have lost their boats and their dream of successfully competing in and completing this race - which is so tough that it belies [...]
I remember my first time on a Tall Ship. I remember friends being cool about it when I could tell they really wanted to say: Wha!? How high? And I can remember teachers at school seeing the romance of it, asking one or two questions. Square sails? Really? Today? There just weren’t that many Tall [...]
Sailing a Rival 34 for our eighth issue made me very tempted to harness the wind and just get on over the horizon. I was instantly attracted to the easy movement and that cushioned sense of suspension – or a lack of heave if you will, that I normally associate with well-designed wooden boats. I [...]
Noel’s flood is a joke by Geoffrey Chaucer in his Miller’s Tale - part of the Canterbury set. It’s invented by the young wife of an older carpenter, and her would-be lodger lover to persuade him to set up barrels hanging from his roof rafters into which they should climb at night, to be sure [...]
Can you remember getting into boating? Chances are a wooden boat made sense because you could pick one up in quite good condition for a few thousand pounds, and that is still true. I remember buying Salote, a 30ft (9m) 1953 Scarborough Sloop at a fabulous bargain price – shared between three of us. The [...]
Firstly can I apologise? This is a combined issue, with August pushing into September. We didn’t start the year with that plan but as June developed our commitments to the Brest Festival became more clear and I realised there was no way with our small team to be able to attend Brest as part of [...]
