Chapter One - Grammar Grub

The first time I sailed was in the summer of 1961 when I was 12 years old. It was on Barton Broad in Norfolk and I was at my Grammar School's annual sailing camp, courtesy of my parents who'd stumped up the £10 fee for the week. (My Dad was earning about £20 a week as a draughtsman - probably above the national average at that time, so £10 wasn't a small amount.) The site of the School camp is still there - it's now called the Hertfordshire County Council Sailing Base, Barton Turf.

I'd read all the Arthur Ransome books by the time I was 11; I even tried to write my own version of them for the Class 4a Wall Magazine at Roebuck Junior School in Stevenage. But my experience in boats until that time had been limited to rowing on Abraham's Bosom Boating Lake at Wells-Next-The-Sea while on family holidays there (it's now a caravan site). I'd taught myself to get around under oars fairly effectively if not too elegantly. But going to Grammer School in 1960 opened a number of doors, not the least of which was the chance to learn to sail just like John, Susan, Titty and Roger. And Nancy and Peggy. And Dick and Dorothea. But mostly like the Death and Glories.

The Sailing Camp had a good number of dinghies - among them two Norfolks, two Kestrels, a Bosun, four Coypus (a local class looking like a bathtub and built from GRP), one Wayfarer, and two beautiful half deckers - Atalanta, a White Boat (a Yare and Bure One Design) and Amaryllis, equal in size and performance, but not of a class as I remember. These last two were borrowed for the week of the sailing camp from generous friends of the school, as was the Wayfarer, from a Mr Armitage, I remember.

There were also two Kayaks and a rescue boat - a twelve foot wooden clinker dinghy powered by a one and a half horsepower British Seagull outboard engine.

That first week I learned to sail, capsized a Kestel, crewed the Bosun when it capsized, and capsized and sank a Norfolk. I learned to paddle a Kayak and not to attempt to get into it by crawling along the foredeck. I also learned to run the rescue boat, and to start the Seagull - a very valuable lesson later in my life.

I returned to the sailing camp the following year and reckoned that I knew how to sail; an assumption that was disproved four years later.