Dishonorable Discharge – Yarns of Wine, Woman and Waves

Dedicated to my family Mum and Dad and their offspring’s, Jeremy, Joff, Buster, and best mates Richard Oxley, Alan Jones and the unforgettable Big Dave. A bad sail with these guys was always better than a good day in the office!

I would also like to raise a glass to those privileged passengers who were lucky enough to sail on the beautiful lavender hulled Union Castle ships between Southampton and South Africa back in the halcyon days of sea travel. This book will raise a wry smile at the antics of the officers in their efforts to entertain their charges and really what went on up on the bridge and way down below in the bowels of the ships as we endeavoured to keep to the companies tight sailing schedule.

Perhaps some salty sons of the sea who ran Union Castle passenger ships and Clan Line cargo ships may recognize some of the stories and recall how much fun it was to be young and carefree tramping around the globe visiting ports as yet spared from hordes of package holidaymakers.

Slightly closer to shore there are hundreds of hardy sailors who at an early age were cajoled into tiny sailing dinghies on numerous rivers and lakes to learn the skills of sailing with its utterly confusing vocabulary and the additional benefit of a quick dunking if or when you got it wrong. The sensible ones got married and took up gardening otherwise you graduated to offshore racing which involved hours if not days crashing about the North Sea. All this in a variety of sailing craft ranging from really wet and uncomfortable so called classics to state of the art flyers. As any cash strapped skipper will tell you the two best times for a boat owner are the day you buy a yacht and the day you sell her!

If you drank warm Watneys Red Barrel, wore flares, Chelsea boots and a Ben Sherman shirt, rode a Royal Enfield motor bike or Lambretta scooter, knew all the Beatles or Stones lyrics and struggled to buy a condom you may find some resonance in the meandering stories of the boy who ran away to sea, twice.