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Nick Burnham: His very last boat trip before he died was a final cruise up his beloved River Dart with my mother and I aboard my own boat
After a long illness, my father died. Before he died he asked me to read a tribute at his funeral. He jotted down a few facts and dates for me. Under ‘interests’ he’d written just two things, table tennis and boating. Oddly, I’d never really thought of him as an especially passionate boater, more someone who just happened to own a boat. But in fact my father was a boat owner almost continually since not long after I was born.
His boat ownership career began with a plywood Mirror dinghy. Back in the 1960s you could buy these in kit form and build them yourself, which is exactly what he did. I don’t recall it being sailed much, it mostly lived in the garage gathering dust. But one day he took a notion to buy an open dayboat called a Drascombe Lugger, and suddenly the family Burnham was afloat! Kept on the Royal Dart Yacht Club moorings, we’d sail it mostly in the river. He did have one intrepid trip to Salcombe in it with his brother-in-law. A Hurley 22 followed, giving us (tiny) accommodation wherever we sailed. And sail it we did, all the way to Falmouth and back on more than one occasion, four of us and a dog for up to three weeks at a time.
After my sister and I left home, he switched to competitive sailing within the yacht club, part owning both a Squib and a Scimitar, open keel boats that the club held one design races for. Then he surprised us all by buying a Sea Ray 200 Overnighter, a 20ft cuddy cabin fitted with a Mercruiser 4.3 litre V6 that would do 40 knots! He blatted about in that for a year or two
