SAILING HOME
“I saw Neptune in a wave once. He was green, and he was giving me a hard look. He could see straight through me, and it was not good.”
It’s a pitch black night, somewhere between Dartmouth and Weymouth. I’m at the helm of the 49ft (14.9m) gaff cutter Hardy and there’s hardly a breath of wind. An ineffectual engine nudges us along at about 2.5 knots over the water, leaving the current to do the hard work, as it sweeps us along the south coast of England towards the Isle of Wight.
Built ‘on spec’ by the yard of Summers & Payne near Southampton in 1910, Hardy has had a chequered history, having been used as a houseboat and studio for several decades before being returned to sailing condition in the early 1990s. Current owner Noel Probyn inherited the boat from his father when he was 23 years old and describes her ongoing restoration as a “mourning therapy”. This is one explanation for why the work below decks has never been finished: once the boat is complete, the mourning will be over and a major connection with his father will be lost.
Last summer, Noel decided to take to the West Country, hoping to sail to the Isles of Scillies. But the weather was
