Through his sailing career he has sailed several different classes of yachts from attungas, gwen 12s where his regular crew was Peter Redden to mosquitos with Robert Florance and trailer sailors with Graham Langsford.

When puffin pacers

appeared, he sailed them with Catherine Bennett and Richard Haigh. He also helped with the yacht club sail training and

became hooked on team sailing and was always ready to lend a hand with start/finish boats at sail training and was forever

repairing the pacers. He is

always helping around the Boat Shed, ensuring the recalcitrant tractor remains active and looking after ‘Tenacious’ & ‘Viking’

The “old man of the sea” as he is affectionately known, ran the start/finish boat for several years first with Rex Barrett and then with Maggie Patterson and then announced last year, he had an ambition to sail in a pacer in his 80th year and he turned 80 on New Year’s Day.

He tidied up ‘Blue Oyster’ into top racing condition, found himself a crew, went bike riding every morning to get fit and has now realised his dream. Not only has he realised his dream, on the last two race days, he has won Division Two on yardstick. As he came ashore last Saturday he proudly announced there were 137 years in his boat, so well done to both Ron Hall and Jenny Fraser.

Saturday night there was an impromptu belated birthday tea in his honour and three of the past longest-standing members of the yacht club, Shirley Bell, Maggie Patterson and Richard Ley were there along with friends to help him celebrate.

The Scribe