For the Love of Sauntress – A Forty-year Affair published as recently as 2014 by the ever-creative Lodestar Books tells the story of Martin O’Scannall’s life with a notably beautiful gaff cutter, mainly on England’s East Anglian coast, writes Tom Cunliffe.

The book is exquisitely written, and one can only imagine Dick Wynne at Lodestar rubbing his hands in delight when it came his way.

In his own unique way, O’Scannall shows us how a man ready to listen to lessons taught in the classroom of the creeks and the open sea can learn as much about himself as he can the way of a sailing boat on salt water.

These two extracts reveal the dramatic personal results of the radical decision to scrap a perfectly good engine and let his old yacht live again. While entertaining delightfully, he quietly slips us some priceless hints about how to manoeuvre under sail in tight waters while sharing the secrets of discovering that self-reliance which is the ultimate hallmark of the sailor.

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