raced in towards the beach. I had the centreboard a few inches up and my brother had the rudder rope in the same hand as the mainsheet – ready to haul up the wooden blade of the rudder as soon as we landed. Mathieu was on the edge of the starboard gunwale – none keener to get ashore than he. Just yards from the beach the centre-
board and rudder were up, but we were now on the back of the roller as it took us in before bursting on the beach beneath us. Now was the moment to jump out and haul, before the wave’s water receded, dragging us back into the following wave. The front of the dinghy grounded on the
steep beach and we were out with the water just above our knees. We pulled the boat forward a foot or two enjoining each other to heave hard. Seconds later the fol- lowing wave hit the little dinghy’s transom pushing her forward momentarily out of our grip, but Mathieu was ahead with the bowline and the boat didn’t slew sideways. We carried on hauling with all our
strength and inched the boat up over the wet pebbles which were sliding away under our feet. We grabbed the sodden tent, a dead-
weight in the boat and cast it further up the beach, then the kitbag and the ruck- sack which were similarly heavy with
44 SEAHORSE
seawater. After that the boat was easier to pull up the shingle and once it was close to the top we threw ourselves down on the hot dry stones beside it and lay panting in the sun as the red sails flapped and billowed above us. The boat was our Mirror dinghy Golly
Gosh and this was the second time we had taken her up the Cuckmere, which to me, aged 11, was about as much fun as you could have. We’d had the boat two years by then and we were getting more confident every time we sailed her. I often say to people that my dad bought her and just pushed us out to sea saying: ‘You’ll be alright!’ The truth was we did have some sailing
lessons, in another dinghy with a leather- faced ex-Royal Navy man called Comman- der Mander who ran the local Sea Scouts. But it was my brother mainly who was get- ting the tuition. My own experience was altogether more romantic as I watched the water slipping by, letting my daydreams wander free. Then occasionally I’d be asked to pull in the sheet. My early impressions were that this was all pretty easy. At 10ft 10in (3.3m) the Mirror was the
perfect boat for children, or anyone of any age wanting to learn to sail. It was launched in 1963 as part of the DIY revo- lution that was taking place in a post-war can-do Britain. It was promoted as a boat
that you could build yourself from a kit in around 100 hours, and lots of people did just that, building them in their front room over a winter. Importantly, you didn’t need serious carpentry skills to do it. The initial design was by the famous TV
DIY presenter Barry Bucknell who, urged on by his son, came up with the basic shape and plans using the stitch-and-glue method of joining together 6mm plywood panels. The technique itself was pioneered by Ken Littledyke, a woodwork teacher who later made Kayel canoes. Stitching boat seams is an ancient method but this used copper wire stitches to join pre-cut panels which were then sealed over using resin and glassfibre ribbon. The system was very strong as our regular bumpy landings on stony lee shores attested. The Daily Mirror journalist Paul Boyle
heard about the project and offered sup- port through the paper if Bucknell agreed to call it the Daily Mirror dinghy and change his blue and white sails to the red of the Mirror newspaper masthead. Promoters at the paper also sought
second opinions, including from Yachting World editor Bernard Hayman, who went to trial the prototype. ‘I thought it was awful,’ Bernard told me in 1998. ‘So they called in Jack Holt to get it right.’ Holt had already had success with the
ROBERT OWE-YOUNG
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114
