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Shipwreck, Small Boats and High Latitudes
Roger Taylor

We don't get that many near-death experiences at MCA meetings. Well, not many described by speakers anyway. Older members will remember how one speaker in a submersible several miles down, creeping round the wreck of the Titanic, hit another one coming the other way with a loud clang. That must have been bad.

Roger Taylor had his on the deck of a replica square rigger. He had signed on in Aus for a trip to New Zealand and beyond but they became embayed off the north west coast of NZ in a northwesterly gale — a poor decision by the skipper. They fought for days to keep off the lee shore but eventually ran into a sandbank. Howling wind, wild seas breaking over them and white water all around, the only possible way out was over the side. Roger stood on the deck and thought the end was nigh. Not just nigh but already with a cold arm around his shoulder. And then he jumped. Just as well you thought when you saw the heap of timber on the beach that had been the beautiful replica just a few hours before. After that he decided the sea was the place for him provided he controlled his own destiny. So he took up single-handed ocean sailing. Seems obvious really.

The first boat he built himself; 19 foot LOA in ferro with a beautifully crafted wooden superstructure. He sailed her between Aus and NZ several times, first in 1974 when the boat was rolled during a violent 4 day storm. He was caught out again in a later crossing and read an account of how his body had been washed up on a Queensland beach – a near death experience from the other direction.

Then he came back to the UK and sailed on the east coast for a decade before somehow he became involved in work and family and sailing slipped away for a while. His interest was rejuvenated by the 2005 Jester Challenge. Small boats, no sponsorship, no rules, no committees and an emphasis on personal responsibility. So he bought a 20-foot Corribee and set about oceanifying her. Lots of buoyancy, strong watertight bulkheads, junk rig. He did away with the washboards and sliding cover and replaced them with solid timber and a watertight hatch on the top. He could seal himself in if it got bad; he arranged it so that he could stand in the hatch and control the boat, hardly ever needing to emerge onto deck. He called her Ming Ming — and she doesn't have an engine.

In the last few years he has sailed Ming Ming on epic single-handed adventures to the Azores(twice), up to Iceland via the Faeroes, to Jan Mayen Land and up round the top of Iceland, to the west coast of Greenland and, last year, to Spitsbergen. He has suffered a few knockdowns without real harm but the Greenland trip was cut a little short when he was thrown from his bunk and broke a rib.

He says he thrives on remoteness and has a love for the high Arctic. This year he's hoping to go to Franz Josefs Land and the Barents Sea. He's planning to abandon Ming Ming for a larger faster boat and has settled on an Achilles 24 for the extra half knot he should get.

This is not everyone's cup of tea (or even mug of bouillon, which is Roger's tipple). Many members are more into the comfortable sails between tavernas. But not all. And even the less adventurous are pleased that there is somebody out there crossing watery wildernesses, snug but slightly vulnerable, in a small boat. They wouldn't want to be there — too much like a near-death experience perhaps — but are delighted when someone like Roger can give them such a clear idea of how and why he does it.

Old Angus for once sought me out in the car park afterwards. He was ablaze with an idea. The old Mirror dinghy in the garage. He could oceanify her and set off on lone adventures to remote corners of the planet, scan savage coasts, cut off from civilisation. Elspeth would have to stay at home of course – perhaps sending him on his way with a good supply of her delicious twice-baked bara brith. They wouldn't be able to communicate with one another for months on end but, after such a long marriage, he somehow felt he could cope with that.

THE ANNUAL DINNER

This was an experimental, even innovative, dinner dance in the sense that, in the (planned) absence of a band, there was no encouragement to dance. The meal was all that we expected except that some diners found that they were down for a main course called “Alepie”. This sounded more like a skin condition than a dish and at best, were it to be food, could be expected to be some exotic variation of Quorn or tofu. One irritated diner was about to explain that he had ordered “Ale Pie” when the penny dropped.

After the toasts and coffee we had a quiz. This was the usual rancorous affair with disputes about where Eyemouth is, the height of Mount Everest in miles and whether Leningrad counted as a valid answer. The answer to the Coronation Street question (we always have to have one for some reason) brought a quiet murmur of nostalgia (Can you still get those hairnets?). I was appalled to find that my wife knew Engelbert Humperdinck's real name. And did you know that the first women in the world to be enfranchised were New Zealanders?

The stand-up bingo was organised and run from the table I will call the Petrolheads and both cards were won by Petrolheads. The expected insinuations muttered their way around the room.

Then the more physical games started. The first of these was Weighing the Anchor which involved remotely recovering an anchor (a real folding grapnel one) from an imaginary seabed (the redundant dance floor) using provided poles that were too short, string, a bit of wire and some foam. Without dragging it. This was important because damaging the floor with this spiky, rusting object would have set us back more than cleaning up after the polar bear did. So, five times the dangling load wavered above the precious floor as lashed pole bent and string strained. But happily finances survived and the anchor was placed each time gently on the carpet that was the imaginary boat that had lost it.
Then we had to guess the weight of the anchor and then it was time for the boat race.

This involved half-a-dozen people from each table climbing in turn into a boat. The was not quite an imaginary boat but consisted of a broadly boat-shaped frame that you had to climb into and hold up around the crew. With a skipper in the back the construction had to be guided up a channel marked according to the IALA Region A Lateral Buoyage Convention and then be docked against a quay (represented by the stage that would have carried the band if there had been one). And here's the thing. Everyone in the boat except the skipper was blindfold; the boat was steered by him or her shouting Commands.

It was frankly hilarious because it was frankly realistic. The crew, who had little idea of what was what, shuffled forwards helplessly while the megalomaniac in a funny hat at the back screamed commands. Where have we seen that before? The all-woman team was guided to a precise and gentle berthing with quiet confident commands (I've been instructed by management to make that point). While most tables regarded this as a light-hearted diversion of a game, one bunch of elderly gentlemen had a team talk before their go, looking very serious. The skipper even called for hush from the crowd so his commands could be better heard; it was like asking the Southern Ocean to calm down dear.

Quite who won all this I have already forgotten (and there were mutterings about the scoring system anyway) but it did bring to an end an extraordinary and very enjoyable evening.

Old Angus was in the car park attending to his Rover and Elspeth was presumably somewhere nearby, perhaps hiding. The lumps of Sikalex in his beard glittered in the lamplight as he told me this was the best MCA Dinner since the celebrated 1948 one. Then, Elspeth had taken just a little to much sherry and spent the latter part of the evening swinging through the rafters like a gibbon, taunting the upturned faces below.

But at least, he insisted, she didn't disgrace herself.

Photos in the members area.