Weathering winter weather

A handy guide to keeping warm and dry

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Back in 2022 at this time of year, I was fair flying along, sailing on bare poles over mountainous crests as I worked south to round the Horn in shrieking winds so deafening I couldn't even hear the heavenly, soaring strings of the Nelson Riddle orchestra accompanying Frank Sinatra on that easy-listening classic Come Fly With Me.

Up top the Hydrovane self-steering was coping manfully, but down below it was carnage, like being in a washing machine on a cold spin. The floorboards were afloat, my delicates and fast-coloureds all mixed up together in the dirty bilge water with a sodden, swollen and now useless copy of the essential blue-water sailor's bible Sailing: And How To Do It. I'd already read the first chapter-Sailing, And When to Do It-but had found it a bit confusing.

Neither am I sure I'd completely got the gist of chapter two on Sailing-Where to Do It, but the great pity of it was that I hadn't even got to the chapter about how to secure books in a seaway.

Anyway, I had more pressing issues to deal with and struggled across the cabin as dividers, knives, machetes, fire extinguishers and even a spatula flew past my head and impaled themselves on the bulkhead in a rather artistic arrangement that was at least as good as this year's Turner Prize.