Charlie Stock was a singular sailor, who was for sixty years a part of the scenery on his home waters of the Thames Estuary. In his last book, published posthumously, he describes and handles the local features and hazards meeting the small boat sailor, not only in...

My good friend Fabian Bush built me a (-nother!) boat a few years ago and we launched her together in 2014 at West Mersea in Essex. Teal is named for the 'small dabbling duck' in recognition of the direction my sailing was expected to take in my dotage, and she has...

The Albert Strange Association (bear with me), in which I am heavily implicated, held its Annual General Meeting in Lincoln a few years ago, and our very engaging guest speaker was Dr Robb Robinson, a maritime historian at the University of Hull. His subject was...

When barely sixteen I spent two months with my slightly younger brother Dave hitch-hiking, and often rough sleeping, around Scotland watching birds. We went as far north as the Shetland isle Fetlar to see the snowy owls which bred there, and managed to cadge an...

My enthusiasm for boats began early. I grew up in an artistic family in the enchanting fishing village of Staithes, settled on many levels within immense cliffs on the rugged North Yorkshire coast some ten miles northwest of Whitby. Often, huge seas battered the...

[Sea-Country is now out of print but we thought you'd still enjoy this extract]Tony Smith is now the keeper of Charlie Stock's game little 16-foot gaff cutter Shoal Waters, and has made it his business to take her the length and breadth of the Thames estuary, and into...