Old Man Sailing
DICK DURHAM
You’re old, you’re vulnerable, you’re threatening to burden the NHS. What should you do? Well, the Government’s advice back in March 2020 was to stay at home for three months while the microscopic thistle-heads of the COVID-19 virus spread like wildfire throughout the land. That did not appeal to solo, transatlantic yachtsman John Passmore, then 70-years-old. So, before the germ police could stop him, he decided to self-isolate in international waters.
And with the blessing of his wife and children, John boarded Samsara, his Rival 32, and sailed out into the North Sea from the Walton Backwaters in Essex.
He had decided to stage his own AZAB (Azores and Back) and, during his 42-day, 3,629-mile passage, John found time to produce a retrospective of his sailing life which has just been published (Old Man Sailing, Samsara Press).
In it we learn that the 11-year-old John listened to a talk by the then un-knighted Francis Chichester at the Walton & Frinton Yacht Club, about winning the OSTAR, the inaugural single-handed race across the Atlantic in 1960. That’s what sparked off his waterlust.
At that stage the schoolboy only had a sailing dinghy to play in, but he imagined himself as Chichester curled up under the foredeck and when he climbed out, he did so in stages to imitate companionway steps.
It would be 28 years before John sailed his own OSTAR in 1988 aboard Largo, his first Rival 32. By then he was a well-respected Fleet Street journalist. John came 65th out of 96 starters, but he has no myopic mania for cuppery; it is always the race, in the sense of life’s journey, not the result for this sailor who wears B&Q ‘oilskins’, heats himself beside a charcoal stove and is not averse to eating tinned food topped with Nutella. Cold.
Six days out, on his lockdown voyage, he had the Shetland
Islands abreast where there were ghosts to lay. Although no sucker for trophies, John does like a challenge and in 2000 he tried to set a round Britain and Ireland non-stop solo sailing record. Unfortunately, an unseasonal storm capsized his 27ft catamaran, Lottie Warren, and left him clinging to the upturned hull. He was rescued by helicopter.
Looking back on the shipwreck, John muses: ‘And now I am 71. I am an old man. I don’t want anyone risking their lives to rescue me again. Don’t get me wrong I do not want to die now any more than I did when I stood on the bottom of the little catamaran shouting at the sky. However, nor do I want to end up in a care home staring blankly at the television while a cheery girl in a plastic apron says: “Never mind, let’s get you cleaned up.”’
So he sailed on, passing eerie Rockall and eking out his victuals noting that Kingsmill loaves lasted three weeks after their ‘best before’ date, unlike his boat-cooked bread which perished just days after baking: ‘I wish I knew what they put in it.’ Pink Lady apples, meanwhile, ‘last forever.’ Unlike his garden-grown Coxes which ‘wrinkle as soon as you show them the fruit bowl.’ His Pink Lady supply would last him a month, he calculated, ‘…assuming that whatever they were sprayed with didn’t kill me first...’
Having rounded the Azores he headed for home, looking forward to an anchorage off the Isles of Scilly until discovering it was ‘closed’ due to pandemic restrictions. The open ocean produces intense introspection especially to the lone yachtsman, but John is driven by fear of the alternative – staring blankly at that care home TV. A fate which could only ever produce the desire to be somewhere else. See: www.oldmansailing.com
‘This sailor wears B&Q ‘oilskins’ and is not averse to eating tinned food topped with Nutella. Cold.’