Get a taste of what our legendary powerboat writer will be saying
It’s a lifetime since I joined Motor Boat & Yachting. I was in my 30s when I was head-hunted from another leading boating mag in 1968 by the then editor.
I was asked to write a regular column on motorboating in general and all forms of powerboat racing in particular. The first Round Britain Race was looming and I would be kept busy as MBY in those days was published every two weeks.
Few realised this race would be followed by the London-Monte Carlo and two more Round Britains over the next 40 years.
I also happened to be a full-time government press officer, but in those days freelance moonlighting was almost taken for granted. I was once told by another contributor that he calculated my column, race reports and other features to account for 20% of the magazine’s content.
I’m not sure if this was true but the workload eased a little in 1975 when the MBY printers walked out on a 12-month strike and the mag almost wound up. Fortunately it was saved by becoming a monthly.
I’ve lived with the mag through seven editors and seen many of its full-time staff take over other boating magazines in the group so I guess MBY can rightly claim to provide a worthwhile learning environment.
I began contributing to ybw.com when it was introduced over a decade ago. My regular column in the magazine ceased in 2010 but I’ve continued to appear on the web and now I’m being given the opportunity at the age of 81 to write a regular blog.
Hopefully all those loyal MBY readers who have followed my items over the years will join me on the web. I’m not planning to bore everyone with competitive motorboating as powerboat racing today is a shadow of its former self but the Cowes-Torquay-Cowes, the forthcoming Round Britain 2012 and Cowes-Monte Carlo should be interesting to anyone who owns a motor boat.
My aim on the blog will be to offer opinion on what’s happening in the world of motorboating and to criticise authority and those afloat whose actions generate problems for us all.
I’ll do my best to give the benefit of my experience from the days before GRP to the present. Hope you enjoy it…
