I passed the exam and avoided a long stint in purgatory with the 120-grit. I mastered the art of parking with a two-foot air gap between the boat and the pontoon and hoped my younger sister would make it ashore before the examiner noticed. ‘I hand-sanded and hand-painted those topsides,’ she warned, ‘don’t you dare scratch them.’ I did not. In fact, it wasn’t until I took my Yachtmaster exam that she finally relented and handed over the tiller. When it came to handling our wooden race-yacht-turned-family-cruiser, Polar Bear, she was less generous with the driver’s seat. Mind your bows,’ said my mother in an increasingly high-pitched voice, ‘bit more to port…don’t clip the stern!’ I was 17 and we were in Tesco’s car park in our old Vauxhall estate doing ‘circuits and bumps’.
