Shooting
Efram Lee watches the
sailors shooting
The Sailor’s Blathlon T
here was a time when sailing, skiing and the country pursuits had very different followers – you either went to the mountains to ski, the Caribbean to sail or Scotland or some such place for the shooting, but only a few people in a very rarefi ed stratum of society would think of doing them all. Nowadays, it is almost more usual than not for owners of sailing boats to be skiers and shooters; why this should be, who knows? A good sociologist could probably explain; but there is no doubt that, when the sailing season is over, the Isle of Wight becomes a Mecca for sailors who rush home, change boots and reappear at a shoot. Illustrative of this is the Royal Thames Yacht Club’s
Autumn Excuse, which takes place in the West Wight every October, when Thames members are the guests of the Royal Solent YC and friendly competitions are held on the water, but also at Wilmingham Shoot and, to a much less accomplished extent, on the golf course. If the standards of the various disciplines on show during this weekend can be extrapolated over yacht club membership as a whole, then it must be concluded that sailors make for better shots than swings.
Rumour has it that there are between 30 and 35 shoots on the Isle of Wight, counting all from the most casual to the best organised. In the West Wight there are seven notable shoots, Wilmingham, Ashen Grove,
76 cywinter 2011
Coombe, Rowborough, Bowcombe, Hamstead and King’s Manor. This latter is owned by Jamie Sheldon on his land adjacent to the River Yar and it is not unusual for guns to be transported by boat to their next stand. Jamie is also, of course, the owner of Harwoods, the venerable yacht chandlers in Yarmouth and a business not slow at recognising a trend. Harwoods sits on the opposite side of St James’s Square from the George Hotel, whose patron, Jeremy Willcock, is an archetypical sailor-who-shoots, being not only the Commodore of the Royal Solent Yacht Club and ex-captain of the local XOD class but also a keen shooter who used to run the Rowborough shoot. The George is now as full of shooting types of a winter evening as it is with sailing types of a summer one, with dogs spread out in front of the fi re and special rates for shooting parties (01983 760331). And in the mornings, they pile across the road to Harwoods to buy cartridges and the shooting accoutrements they’ve forgotten to bring with them as well as specialist lines that they would be lucky to fi nd anywhere else.
During the winter months, Harwoods undergoes a
transformation and reveals its shooting side, with the chandlery still available but taking something of a back seat. Apart from being the Island’s only stockist of Lyalvale Express cartridges – including the Supreme Game for
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