Skipper’s View

in Chichester Harbour, moored alongside a chap by the name of Nick Skeates. Nick is a hugely experienced sailor who has circled the globe on a number of occasions in , a yacht he designed and built himself. Nick was not a man to get off, but then he proceeded to wait days for a favourable wind. He later confessed that he'd happily spend weeks doing this. Now, as I say, he was a consummate sailor and, ever since, I have aspired to this philosophy - and summarily failed. Time and tide wait for no man they say and I swiftly realised that if I was going to actually work for a living and go sailing, I wasn't going to be doing much sailing if I waited for a fair wind. A recent sail to Italy was a fine demonstration of this. I think I had about six hours of beam reach in a four-day trip. Initially, I thought of the sailors on tallships, who would simply have anchored off the nearest port and waited for a fair breeze. Then I remembered Nick and realised I knew an arch exponent of this method and doffed my hat to him. Still, I don't think I'm quite ready (yet) to subsist on £5 a day. I'll keep you posted…