ABOVE: Roger
still found freedom
through sailing,
including rounding
Ardnamurchan
Point
INSET: Never a dull
moment sailing
with friend
Peter Davies
a course towards the weather side of the lighthouse.
Anything else and we would soon be wrecked on
sandy, low-lying land.’
Roger’s fortitude that night came from the spartan
upbringing he’d had from his hardy parents, Alec and
Aline, who took Roger and sister Diana on camping
holidays in the Scottish Highlands based around an
Enterprise sailing dinghy and a canoe.
This sparked a love of sailing literature that
evolved from Arthur Ransome to Eric Hiscock.
‘He left a mark on me because in the mid-1950s,
it was a revolutionary idea, the thought that an
ordinary couple could contentedly sail round the
world in their own boat.’
As a teenager, Roger sailed
with his father in chartered
yachts around Skye, the
Outer Hebrides and Ireland.
‘It taught me that sailing
brings an intensity to life and
is never boring. You can go
for a weekend’s sailing and
return feeling as though you’ve
been away for a whole week.’
Like the time he sailed
with Cambridge friend BobBradfi eld, the creator of Antares Charts profi led in
Yachting Monthly, in the latter’s 31ft wooden sloop,
Inigo. They went from Falmouth to Baltimore,
Schull, and visited Skellig Michael, one of the stacks
that rises 600ft from the sea off the Kerry coast.
‘We took it in turns to climb to the summit,
where the monks lived on what clearly must have
felt like the very edge of the world. I’ve never yet
met anyone who has managed to land on those
islands from a yacht, and these days, it’s prohibited.’
Two months later, Roger collapsed at St John’s
College and was subsequently diagnosed with MS.
‘It meant I couldn’t climb any more mountains,
but it certainly wasn’t going to stop me sailing.’
Indeed, Roger went on to complete his RYA
Offshore Yachtmaster and shortly after, made the
fi rst of three passages to St Kilda in a Dehler 36.
‘A Harris fi sherman had warned me, “Never go
there, it’s much too far out” and unless you have
a weather window for a 40-mile dash out into the
Atlantic and back, it’s sound enough advice. But
the lure of the place is so strong.’
On that trip, Roger and crew landed at Village Bay
and were met by an Army offi cer who offered them
a beer at the remotest pub in Europe, the Puff Inn.
Roger next sailed his own boat, Minella, a TrintellaYou can go for a weekend’s
sailing and return feeling
as though you’ve been
away for a week
CRUISING LIFE