These days I even hold on to the handrails when I walk onto our jetty, but there was a time when I did a lot of sailing and there was a moment when a friend and I almost bought the "Spirit of Barbary", an old wooden boat moored off Gona off the coast of New Guinea, to sail away from it all.
That moment came and went and we never did sail away from it all, but every time I hear of some incredible sailing story, my ears still prick up - and what could be a more incredible sailing story than sailing an 18ft open sailing boat all the way from England to Australia?
David Pyle was a young sailing instructor who’d crossed the English Channel in a Wayfarer; then he designed and built a 27ft yacht to compete in the 1968 OSTAR. All this turned out merely to be a prelude to the great adventure that was to come when he and Dave Derrick sailed an 18ft open Drascombe Lugger called Hermes to Australia.
In the foreword to his book "Australia the Hard Way", Pyle notes that the two young men made the trip for no better reason than to prove it could be done. Rather than going by conventional yacht, the Drascombe would allow them to use rivers and harbours impossible for other craft. An example is that, rather than entering the Indian Ocean by way of Suez and the Red Sea, they cruised instead through Iraq down the Tigris and into the Persian Gulf.
My sailing days are over but I can still read and perchance dream, and so David Pyle's book "Australia the Hard Way" is on my shopping list.
