BOOK · 2021
Old Man Sailing
Told to shield from COVID at 70+, a retired Fleet Street journalist went to sea alone instead - 3,629 miles in 42 days.
When the UK government told the over-70s to shield during the 2020 lockdown, retired Fleet Street journalist John Passmore read the guidance, considered it, and sailed single-handed into the Atlantic instead - aboard Samsara, his 1973 Rival 32. He came back 42 days and 3,629 miles later with tattered sails and nearly empty water tanks.
The first book in his Old Man Sailing series (the subtitle is Some Dreams Take a Lifetime), grown out of the blog of the same name - proof that the small-old-boat, small-budget tradition of Slocum and Baldwin is alive and grumbling in the 2020s.
Funny, unsentimental, and quietly radical about what age is for. Narrated by Charles Robert Fox.