It’s described as a ‘real-life Swallows and Amazons’ but there are no inland lakes or green-feathered arrows here. Clutterbuck’s late 1960s teen adventures in the Wayfarer dinghy Calypso involved high-octane sea sailing; running for shelter through rocks and breakers in the Bay of Biscay with the wind rising Force 7 is several notches up from being caught in the dark off a fictionalised Bo’ness on Windermere. From age 14, Clutterbuck set himself and his intrepid companions extraordinary challenges as they braved the Atlantic coast via Bordeaux to the Med and voyaged north as far as Oslo. The sailing is white-knuckled, the resourcefulness breathtaking. Arthur Ransome would have been in awe.
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