Spring 2009: Constance is just back from her first Old Gaffers event, the annu­al East Coast Race week­end at Brightlingsea, where she mixed it with craft large and small, and attrac­ted much admir­a­tion for both her looks and speed, praise which rightly belongs to her…

I first met her in Tollesbury and imme­di­ately fell for her. She was an ­Essex girl through and through but not like all the oth­ers, although she was shal­low. As far as I could see then there were only two prob­lems. There was a big age difference—fifty-five…

Knees are an imme­di­ate indic­a­tion of the boatbuilder’s abil­ity to make good look­ing shapes. Ideally one would like to use an oak crook. However, in these hon­est times, crooks are pretty hard to come by and also must be well seasoned before use, par­tic­u­larly if…

For most of my life my sail­ing was of the arm­chair kind, and in the mid-1970s much of it was in the delight­ful com­pany of Ken Duxbury, a writer whose light touch belies the skill and resource­ful­ness which under­pinned the voy­ages made by him and his wife B. in their…

The light north-east­erly breeze con­tin­ued dur­ing my watch until mid­night, and Juanita sailed on through the dark­ness, her jib shim­mer­ing with the phos­phor­es­cence of the lee bow wave, and little Punch, the 8’ dinghy fol­low­ing in our glisten­ing wake, with a…

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…