A sailing holiday with my dad and his mate didn’t sound too promising. But when I took the tiller in the middle of the night, I had a teenage epiphany
My dad had a pal called George who had a boat. It was a sailing boat but not a very big one – 25ft long. I don’t think you could call it a yacht; it didn’t seem very … yachty. I’m trying to downplay its yachtiness, and how privileged my childhood was, but it’s hopeless. I was on a bloody yachting holiday, OK?
Anyway, despite his boat’s modest size, George was quite adventurous once aboard. One summer, he invited my dad to help him sail it from the west coast of Scotland (I’m thinking maybe Oban) down to the south coast of England. I was 15 or 16 at the time and my dad took me – grumpily, adolescently – along for the ride.