Famous sailors I have met along the way

Bit late catching BA to Faro, so couldn't sit next to wife. Charming norse type offers to swap seats, I get his with legroom and he got mine without. At the carrosel we get chatting about boats ( he was wearing a proper sailing jacket) after some time the bags arrive and we part, he invited me to come on his boat in Vilamoura. What name? says I. Nicorette
It was Ludde Ingvall.
A
 
Whenever RKJ visited Plymouth for a short stay, usually just before a race, we supplied a couple of MN Cadets to help him scrub off in return for a sail around the Sound.
I sailed in a Fastnet and shared a watch with Des Sleightholme and listened to Old Harry tales through the night! Gone but not forgotten.
Sailed with Claire Francis for a day in Jolie Brise and taught her how to handle a big gaff rigged yacht. A real lady. A couple of Onedin Line stars were on board, too.
Got drunk with Chay Blyth on his boat which was laid up in Plymouth after attending a ceremony where his wife had named some small Young Skipper boats for the RYA. She had gone home!
He might have been famous in Poland, but I spent a happy hour chatting with the master of Dar Pormoza the Polish sail training square rigger. We were accompanied throughout by the on board political commissar to make sure I didn't try to corrupt him into becoming a free man!
I was a skipper at the Island Cruising Club when the current training manager at the RYA, James Stevens, was a young dinghy instructor! Gawd, I feel old!
 
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One of his friends told me that he had been through a Force 12 on a solo transat. Not quite believing this I asked him directly and with a lot of digging it came out. He had one of those flexible DIY plywood catamarans ( designer in Devon ? – I forget the name) only 35’ and spent 48 hrs “Knowing I was going to die, it was only a case of when” in a hurricane, went through the eye and out the other side.


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Chap's name wasn't Mark Langdon was it?
 
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The designer could be a mate of mine, Phil Morrison based in Exmouth. Sounds like the sort of thing he could have been involved with.


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Sounds more likely to be James Wharram who lives at Devoran in Cornwall.
 
Everyone seems to have met RKJ and Tom C, and Dame Ellen, so I suppose they don't count? Does Sarah Kettle, the X-Atlantic Rower count?

We knew and sailed in company with Frank & Margaret Dye in our Wayfarer days and most of the other fellow Wayfarer Cross North or Irish Sea & Channel passage makers like Ken Jensen, Ralph Roberts, and the Apps.

Not really mainstream famous sailors, I suppose, bit of a narrow specialist field is long range dinghy cruising?

I guess we don't move in up yotty circles, even tho' we go to Cowes occassionally
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Uncle by marriage in St Michaels in the Chesapeak saw a wayfarer sailing off his dock. He hailed it, only to find it was Frank Dye. Invited him for dinner, had a great chat, but Frank insisted on sleeping aboard his boat. True dinghy cruiser.
Andrew
 
I've a friend who impressesme, he sailed the Atlantic and spent some years in the Azores bfore sailing back to Ireland and the UK.
He was impressed by a guy who came sailing single handed into an Azores port and helped him tie up. He was apparently over 80. Myfriend asked where he had come from. "south Geogia" was the reply. Did you stop at Ascension Island? "no, the weather was rough s I carried straight on".
 
thanks JJ

It certainly was a Wharram cat ( thanks for that ), and I think the chap's name was Mark - it was in Olhao a couple of yrs ago, a delivery so I was only there for the time it takes to book a flight.

It says a lot for Wharram's design ( flexibility) but also goes towards underlining the point that the more impressive things that people do in the sailing world, the less they tend to talk about them.

Probably true for all adventurers..........
 
I was in the Marina at La Foret a few years ago when a single handed racing boat about 12m came down between the pontoons looking for a berth. The skipper went past the empty berth beside us, stopped, then started reversing into the slot. He kicked the tiller over and started rummaging around in the cockpit locker, pulling out bits of rope and odd fenders. He only looked up once, gave the tiller another nudge with his boot and parked the boat perfectly in the berth. I jumped down and held the boat while he secure the warps. When he gave me a "Merci", I thought that he looked familiar and that he really didn't require my help. It was when I saw "Michael Desjoyeaux" stenciled on the coach-house that I realised for sure that he didn't need any help from me.
 
About ten years ago, I was moored in Wooton Creek IOW, reading the Sunday paper, when an elderly gent rowed up in a clinker dinghy. He asked me what class my boat was and when I told him, he replied, 'I guessed it was. My brother designed it'. I was amazed and delighted to be speaking to Colin Smith, brother of Stanley, who both built and sailed a 20 foot open boat and sailed it across the Atlantic in 1949. I know that the Smith brothers are not known widely for the sailing heroes I consider them, which is a shame. Stanley retraced the voyage westwards in 1951 with Charles Violet in Nova Espera after it had been decked. I spent a couple of hours with this quiet spoken gentlman boatbuilder who was a genius in his own right. See here - http://www.badminston.demon.co.uk/sas1.html
 
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