Roll Call 6745 & 21823

Greetings.

I started sailing when I was 6 years old, out of Itchenor and all around Chichester Harbour. I did a sailing course with Commander Hands with several other young lads in the summer holidays. I got the bug! The Mirror was still a relatively new dinghy and I told my father I wanted to have one and that I would start saving my pocket money, which was two shillings a week then (10p). He generously said that for every £1 I saved he would add £5.

For four years all I asked for at Christmas and for my birthday was money. I did extra jobs around the house and garden for money. During the summer holidays of 1966 I had saved nearly enough, but not quite the target I needed. My father weekly commuted down from our home in Leicestershire to our summer house at Wittering. Every Friday evening my sisters and I would gather at the end of the road to welcome him. I still vividly recall him coming around the corner one Friday evening that summer with a white Mirror on a roof rack on top of his Ford Zodiac! 6745 entered my life.

Since we lived close to Leicester my father had gone direct to Bell Woodworking and bought the factory assembled boat from them. We had a trial rigging in the garden the next day and I devoured reading the Mirror Association certificate and members handbook in the evening. We bought a launching trolley and took the boat down to the hard at Itchenor, launched it and went sailing. I was, as you might imagine, very proud! For the next five years every summer holidays I would cycle daily to Itchenor and sail my boat, which I named 'Partout', the French for everywhere. At weekends I would sail alongside my fathers pocket cruiser up to East Head for picnic lunches in the dunes.

When I was 13 I was promised a Seagull outboard motor if I passed an important exam. It stowed away under the thwart and meant that I could get back to the hard if the wind failed me. Each morning I set of on my bike with a packed lunch and a promise to my mother that I would return by 6.00pm and that I would always wear my life jacket. I would get myself into all sorts of scrapes and situations, but I had only my wit and initiative to get out of them. I learnt resilience and independence. It was magical. I did the odd race out of Birdham Yacht Club (before it burnt down) and from Dell Quay, but enjoyed just mucking about in my boat.

Eventually, I grew up and discovered cars and girls and other things to do. The little white Mirror was stored up in the loft and eventually sold, around 1972. It had served me very well.

In time I had my own children and introduced them all to sailing. I devoted my time to racing an International Dragon yacht (and still do). It was my youngest daughter who really took to the sport. She learnt to sail in a wee Optimist dinghy before I suggested she was suited more to a Mirror. In 2004 we went to Datchet Water to buy 21823 for her and sailed from our home club at the Royal Corinthian Yacht Club at Burnham on Crouch. It was wonderful to sail in a Mirror again, though it seemed to have shrunk since my youth! In 2009 she was sold to a new home on the Blackwater.

I still retain a soft spot for the wonderful Mirror dinghy.

Tim