ADRIAN MORGAN

CHARLOTTE WATTERS

Left to their own devices

There was something to be said for benign neglect...

What was your first memory of sailing? A clinker dinghy called Greenfly, perhaps, with a tan lugsail at Emsworth ? Unlikely unless you knew my grandfather, whose boat she was, a retired RN commander, deaf from clinging to a spar after his ship was sunk in the North Sea by a salvo from a German cruiser in 1916, his deafness not so bad that he could pretend not to hear my grandmother’s constant chattering. “Vaccinated with a gramophone needle!” was her explanation.

That’s by the by; Greenfly was a sturdy stem dinghy, probably no more than 14ft, but to a four-year-old a mighty craft with endless, piratical possibilities on the boundless main (Emsworth Harbour). In early spring we would flip her over to scrape and paint her peagreen bottom until one time, might have been the year of the hurricane that swept the land in 1957, she was lifted by the wind, carried a remarkable distance, and smashed to smithereens.

Did that early encounter with wood shape my preference? Certainly, aside from a Laser dinghy, my boats have always been wooden, from the Gull built in the garage in Hampstead, the National 12, through to “We were left the little Waarschip 570 Yellowhammer that I still to our own miss, last seen in 1999 heading for the west country devices, where for all I know she still lives. Given her plywood construction – albeit best Bruynzeel – she may have which weren’t rotted long ago up some lush, tree-lined Devonian creek. iPhones” And of course Sally, which caught my eye hanging to a mooring off Hamble with a notice on her shrouds pleading to be bought – like a seaborne Paddington Bear – a smart, white five-tonner from the board of Laurent Giles in 1937. Our childhood dictates so much of our lives. Early influences are powerful. If your father was a pilot, chances are you will know about lift/draglong before you master quadratic equations, whatever they are. With exceptions, the earlier you start the better you will be, whether it’s at chess, violin or sailing. Start ‘em young;but this is where the great debate rages – how much should you encourage, and how much to allow natural development? Do we want young sailors who, like that wretched Russian figure skater, are pushed beyond their limits? For every Yehudi Menuhin there must be scores of fiddle players who hate the sound of a violin; and young Optimist sailors who will never go near a dinghy again, having been shouted at, coached and circled by a parent’s RIB from a (too) early age.

We can’t return to the days of pottering about in old wooden boats, all white plimsolls, Peter Storm smocks and the yellow Crewsaver buoyancy aids we were all supposed to wear, but seldom did. “In my day there was none of this safety nonsense. Arthur Ransome was my sailing guide. ‘Better duffers, etc’” is a common complaint from a post-war generation whose parents – and grandparent in my case who, luckily for me, did manage to swim –had a more robust attitude to risk.

At our club in the 60s the Swanage lobster fishermen, most of them lifeboat crew, would keep an eye if you strayed too close to Peveril Ledge. They all sailed beautifully varnished YW Dayboats, attuned to every nuance of the bay’s counterintuitive tidal currents. They were our mentors, godlike, and if in a blue moon we beat them, in my National 12 Fesquie, or my brother in Saffron,his yellow Firefly, we would feel like heroes.

It’s natural for every generation to look back fondly. We need nostalgia to convince us – albeit through rose- tinted, wraparound £150 RayBans – that summer days were always sunny, blessed by gentle breezes. They were not. We were, however, left largely to own devices, and they weren’t iPhones. Can I remember ever getting help rigging my dinghy, or dragging it up to the dinghy park after a race? Did my father rush down the beach, or were he and crew Bill Walworth in the bar, celebrating second place in their Albacore. You decide!