My modified Skipper 14 (described in the Spring 2000 Bulletin) was left unused for several years, bow down, mast removed and covered with a tarpaulin. This was over the boom, held high on a birch tree fork set in the mast socket. Such a silly choice of tree – it could just as easily have been an oak or pine branch – but when I looked at it recently it had rotted and collapsed and the boat was filled with water to the gunwales.

I baled it empty into a wheelbarrow, using a mail-order rotary pump on a pistol drill. This came to nearly ninety gallons. Two of us straining hard found it was impossible to lift the bow – this 'plastic boat' is double-skinned and it was obvious that the inaccessible forepeak was also full. Normally this drains, when the boat is level, under the floor to a hatch in the stern. The bow on its launcher was too low for a jack but eventually, using just a crowbar, then a plank and blocks, we raised it and continued pumping from the rear hatch.

Another 50 gallons meant that the boat was carrying nearly twelve and a half hundredweight (636.4 kilos) – it still seems the same shape, though. (In case anyone wonders – the 140 gallons was taken in wheelbarrow journey to the lowest part of the garden next to the neighbour's fence; I'm sure he's always wanted a swamp feature.)

Actually the next on my list of 'must do's' to improve this remarkable Peter Milne-designed boat will be access to the foc'sle for stowage, which will give better weight balance than putting everything in the stern. The linked 'knock-up' lee-boards didn't ever materialize – there came a time when the realisation dawned that there never will be the perfect boat and that every design is a compromise – so let's just keep sailing.

A few years ago I was supernumerary to Frank Southern crewing for Rodney Pattison who was taking one of his trimarans from Poole to Cowes, ready for yet another Round the Island race. It was a glorious sunny day so I lay back on deck as we slid in a gentle breeze past Hurst Castle. Meanwhile Rodney – Flying Dutchman Olympic Gold twice – was leaping around twitching every string to coax an extra quarter knot over imaginary competitors among the dozens of harmless boats around. I couldn't resist it and I asked, "Rodney, don't you ever just sail for the pure pleasure of all this?" He looked a little bemused and after some thought answered in one word – "Why?"

Of such, thank heaven, are gold medallists made, and Slocums, Joyons and Ellens, but I think this only goes to show that there are as many variations in sailors as there are in boats to sail.