Opposite: a picture is worth a thousand words but the magnesium Minilite wheels give it away… the Mirror Eileen on display at the 2022 RYA Dinghy Exhibition. Eileen is an original ‘Year 1’ example from 1963. Left: the author doing the full Kenneth Grahame in 1972 – the year that Mirror production peaked at 116 boats per week! Below: Mrs Betty Williams of Exmouth, Devon bought a sixpenny ticket in a nationwide competition to raise money for the Royal Marines Sailing Club. The prize was a Mirror sailing dinghy, and to her surprise the Marines turned up at her home with the prize. Mrs Williams was delighted, it is her 32nd birthday tomorrow ‘and what could be better than a sailing dinghy for a birthday present, she told us’ – The Daily Mirror on 3 October 1967
my brother. We could have adventures like this where I thought we were winging it, but he had an overall picture that was clearer than mine, most usually informed by his better mathematical brain. It was an early lesson in navigation. We
were basically using a rule of thumb to give us our distance off from a vertical bearing. Our home beach had come into sight
behind the breaking waves sending plumes of spray up into the air at Splash Point. That was the last serious bit of rocky stuff and the beach faced more or less south- west, so we were able to come off the wind a bit, which was comparatively comfy. Even so, once we made our turn into the beach with the wind behind us we’d have a job getting ashore, especially with the boat so heavy. ‘Look, Mathieu! We’re home. You can
have a bath and you’ll be dry and warm in no time. But you need to bail, it’ll make it much easier.’ Mathieu had been quiet for a while, but
now raising his eyes above the gunwales and looking ahead he could envisage an end to the situation. And to his credit he began to bail. The sun was out and the water out to sea was a bright silver blue. I felt the warmth on my shoulders beaming through my soaked heavy rollneck sweater. We were about to get to the trickiest bit,
‘OK, and the other two angles are then
going to be the same, right?’ ‘Yeah, er yes.’ ‘OK, how many degrees in all three
angles of a triangle? Come on, this is simple!’ ‘Um, not 360. Is it 180?’ ‘Ah, God, blood from a stone, it’s so
simple, Daniel! So what’s the angle of the cliff top if we’re at the edge of the rocks? Remember it will be the same as the angle down from the cliff top.’ ‘Ah yeah, er, um, half of 90… so… 45?’ ‘OK, so what does 45° look like? Point
to 45.’ I transferred the jib sheet, locked in its
jamming cleat, to my left hand with my arm hooked around the port shroud and,
with my right arm, made an effort of halving the angle from above my head to the base of the cliffs. ‘OK. So now, where’s the top of the
cliff?’ ‘Um, dunno, ’bout 15° below that?’ ‘OK, so we’re further out than the
rocks. And as long as we keep that cliff top well below 45°, then we’re fairly safe. Do you get it?’ I nodded, still looking at the cliffs, and
tried to convert a grimace to a smile. My face was wet, my wool jersey was heavy and soaked through. A shiver had just shuddered back and forth through me but that was just the water, which was still cold in early June. But we’re safe, we’re fairly safe. I loved
landing a small sailing dinghy in surf on a lee beach where the following waves, if you didn’t get it up the beach fast enough, could roll it over and damage the boat, the rig or both. There was a quick discussion about
getting the mainsail down. ‘I think we’re better just running in on
the wave we choose and getting it up the beach as fast as possible,’ my brother said. ‘Mathieu, you take that rope that’s attached to the bow – the painter. When I say, get out that side and pull us up the beach as fast as you can. ‘Daniel, you do the centreboard and go
out this side. I’ll follow Mathieu. But we’ve got to get this boat up the beach before the next wave hits us. OK?!’ We nodded. The chalk-green water was
marbled in foam and we were sailing quite fast 60 or 70 yards from the beach. There were people on the beach: doughty visitors, the odd local with their canvas windbreaks
SEAHORSE 41
ALAMY & DAN HOUSTON ARCHIVES
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