Long Lost Log: Diary of a Virgin Sailor

by Michael Chapman Pincher

In 1974, 22-year-old virgin sailor Mick escapes unemployment, family and 3-day-week London to become a deckhand on a small yacht, Gay Gander, setting out to sail the Atlantic from England’s West Country, via the Canaries, to Antigua in the Caribbean.

Under the eye of an unfathomable skipper, John Francis Kearney, and his formidable sailing companion Carola (both escaping from a rain-sodden Ireland and broken marriages), Mick has to learn sailing, table manners, bridging the generation gap and getting along with Stryder, the Russian Blue ship’s cat.

Set in a time when the oceans were plastic-free, and a compass, clock and sextant the only tools of navigation, then Mick finds love, gets marooned, almost drowns and jumps ship to escape mortal danger in the Caribbean.

Long Lost Log should be fiction but is the true story of a voyage of discovery that Mick – against all odds – survived to tell this remarkable and hilarious tale. In charting his adventure of a lifetime, the author lost his log book – until fifty years later the diary surfaces out of the blue during an old girlfriend’s attic clearout. This witty, well-paced rite of passage is full of freshness, sexual impulse and a clash of values. The addition of ’70s hippiedom at the many ports-of-call catches the history of the day. Long Lost Log is a voyage of discovery into the price of being free.

His inner and outer journey combines danger with the unexpected, the erotic and the comic. This resonantly related rite of passage leaps from the page like the curious whale that once disturbed the narrator’s watch.

• ISBN13: 9781843518273
• Publish Date: 11 May 2022
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: IE
• Imprint: The Lilliput Press Ltd
• Format: Paperback
• Pages: 176
• Language: English

Reviews

[Kevin Cannon]

At a loose end and with his life going nowhere, Mick accepts an offer to be a deck hand on a small yacht bound for Spain and then the America’s. The only problem is that Mick has never sailed in his life.

With a crash course in the basics of knots, sails and navigation and armed with just his journal and his trusty banjo, Mick sets off on the adventure of his life with his skipper John and John’s girlfriend, the somewhat posh Carola.

Set during the 1970’s at a time when strikes have caused problems and the UK is gripped by an economic downturn leading to the 3 day working week, Mick decides enough is enough.

What follows is a travelogue and personal diary written nearly 50 years later following the return of Mick’s lost journal from an old flame, discovered in an attic on the other side of the world.

The author combines his personal observations with colourful descriptions of the foreign locations he visits. He adds a witty chronicling of the people and situations that he encounters on his maiden voyage.

I’m not a sailor. My relationship with boats is limited to just a trip on the Dover to Calais ferry, ironically in the 1970’s, plus a river trip on a paddle steamer between Tilbury and Tower Bridge.

Neither of these required any sailing knowledge from me so I was intrigued by the details on how to sail that Mick had to learn as his trip unfurled.

I like the way that the author doesn’t try to hide any of his failings and describes his adventures in a ‘walts and all’ way that strangely makes him more endearing.

Written in a nice easy style that makes for a fluid reading experience, this was fun to read whilst also being partly educational.

This book is Ideal for anyone who likes biography, travelogue, sailing, or just enjoys a good adventure story.