Mike Peyton's Maiden Voyage In His First Yacht

Book Extract

My first boat had been what was known as a penny sick, a 24 foot open gaff-rigged centreboarder with eighteen inches draught. In its working life it had taken holiday-makers to the end of Southend pier and back. When I bought it someone had built up the topsides and decked it over, covering the deck with lino. It cost me £200 and left us with £3 in the bank. Kath told me later that because of this impulse buy she didn’t speak to me for a week, but what annoyed her was that I was so excited by buying the boat that I never noticed. However she got over this and later spoke, proudly I like to think, of having the only gaff-rigged kitchen in Essex.

But my biggest disappointment at this time was that I couldn’t sell any yachting cartoons, though I could easily get half a dozen ideas, often based on doom and disaster, just getting out of the creek. What I didn’t realise then was that yachting in those days, as written about in the yachting magazines, was a serious business. Yachtsmen wore peaked caps and put white covers on them, navy fashion, on the day that was ordained as the start of summer. Ensigns came down on the dot at sunset. Paid hands were only just disappearing. I went on boats where the only access to the forepeak was through the forehatch where the paid hand had lived with the paint and sails.

I can date the first sail I had in Vagrant (I called her that because she had no visible means of support) by the other world shattering events that were happening at the same time. One of them was the Hungarian revolution. It was because of this I also got my first crew – many people had to leave Hungary in a hurry and people were asked to take them in and we got Gabor, a student. So on our maiden voyage there was Gabor w3ho was keen but couldn’t speak English and hadn’t even seen the sea (he’d flown in at night) and Tommy, an unflappable ex-army friend of our desert days whom I discovered by chance was a near neighbour. 

So we three tyros set off on our maiden voyage, the plan being to sail to the mouth of the Crouch and back. We had on board a copy of one of the finest books in the body of English literature – Sailing by Peter Heaton. If Heaton had one fault it was to advise his readers to eschew the engine until they could handle a boat under sail. I’m very good at eschewing and as the engine wasn’t working it was only too simple. Peter Heaton ha pride of place on the engine case where Tommy and I had frequent recourse to the information he had to offer, and Gabor had his new English Hungarian dictionary to flip through and a roving commission with the boathook. 

We ran down the Crouch with the prevailing south westerly behind us and the ebb tide under us in a state of bliss, and it was only when we got to Shore Ends that we found we hadn’t quite the experience to sail back against the wind and tide. Later we found that a previous owner had removed the bowsprit and this completely unbalanced her. We didn’t’ know enough to anchor and wait for the flood. So kept on doing what we had been doing since we set off, running before the wind. Our shoal draught kept us afloat as e ran up the coast over the sands. The weather worsened as w sailed north and at one time I had a cutting from then local paper – and of which I was inordinately proud – which said racing had been cancelled on the River Blackwater because of the weather conditions. We had a panic when Gabor, who must of the time had been clutching his lilo and being sick, flipped through his dictionary and pointed below saying, “Puddle, puddle”. Looking below we saw the floorboards were awash and every time Vagrant pounded, the centreboard case grew two watery ears where the centre bolt was. We learned a lot on that trip from Vagrant ad Peter Heaton but the first thing we did wye we got into West Mersea easy to sort out the engine. 

 

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Quality Time was written by Mike Peyton. Mike Peyton lied about his age to join the Army at the start of the Second World War. He spent much of the war in a prisoner of war camp, but escaped to join and fight with the Russian Red Army (told in his memoir An Average War). Mike began sketching as a boy and, after the war, trained at Manchester Art School. He also discovered boating, spending his wedding night camping besides the Thames in London, having got there by canoe! He worked as a freelance cartoonist for New Scientist, Yachting Monthly and Practical Boat Owner, to name but a few. Mike has had over 18 books of yachting cartoons published and in 2016 was dubbed ‘the Picasso of sailing’ by the Yachting Journalist Association. He passed away in late January 2017, a few days after his 96th birthday.