Tom Cunliffe
Tom Cunliffe
B
efore my defection to the Baltic Sea, my home mooring for 30 years was up the Beaulieu River on the West Solent. There’s a useful waterside pub a couple of miles in, handy both for the marina and the scramble-ashore dinghy pontoon favoured by those unwilling to empty their wallets for a South-coast walk-ashore berth. Back then, I could often be found at the bar taking a
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APRIL 2022 Sailing Today with Yachts & Yachting
breather after a tough beat from Dover, or just enjoying a warm-up by the fire. One time, I was halfway down a pint with an old pal who’d been on the river since before I was born, when a young man in a smart Musto jacket offered to buy us both a drink. Neither of us was ever known to refuse refreshment, so we shuffled our stools to one side and he settled in to join us. After confirming that we were indeed locals, his opening gambit
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was to ask if we got fed up with having to motor all that way to the river mouth before we could make sail and do what we’d paid our money for. I responded to that one. It was easy. The answer was, “No” - for two good reasons. The first was that because I had a reasonably athletic yacht (a 22-ton gaff cutter, in fact), I could often sail straight off my mooring and proceed in silence down the waterway, disturbing nobody, least of all the
ILLUSTRATION: CLAIRE WOOD, PHOTOS TOM CUNLIFFE
Sailing the same stretch of water year after year could appear monotonous to the uninitated. Yet the ever changing waters ensure it is anything but
