Sailing-author Tom Cunliffe was for so long associated with traditional-style wooden-built gaff-rigged boats that he found it almost impossible to leap free from being President of the Old Gaffers Association. It was a position in which he was so totally enshrined that when he found himself in any port with another gaff-rigged boat, he was expected to go on board and stroke their finest varnishwork (if they had varnishwork) with a sort of reverse scenario of the rub of the relic.
But then he'd only himself to blame, as his boats included the little Loch Fyne-type Marishka originally built for Pa Guinness of Howth in 1910, a Colin Archer-style cutter, and then the classic Bristol Channel pilot cutter Hirta before his last gaffer, the new-built Nigel Irens-designed transom-sterned Westernman.
In their early years together, the 1910-built Loch Fyne cutter Marishka of Howth was both Tom & Roz Cunliffe's cruising boat, and their floating home. Photo: HYC
YACHTMASTER INSTRUCTOR
As he was also a much-sought-after Yachtmaster Instructor (though using very Bermuda-rigged Sigma 38s as his workhorse), his many and various nautical books were and are highly regarded. But being so immersed in the marine verbiage industry meant that at times mental drowning seemed imminent, so when Westernman was being built in Nova Scotia, Tom and his heroic-to-the-point-of-saintliness wife Roz did a Transamerican Harley Davidson road trip which resulted in a breakout travel book, Good Vibrations.
A young Tom Cunliffe aboard his newly-acquired vintage Bristol Channel Pilot Cutter Hirta in Howth in 1982. Photo: W M Nixon
This was well received by those who did not associate Tom with boat books. But in some cases his maritime addicts felt uncomfortable, and reckoned he should stick to the knitting. Yet the discombobulation was as nothing compared to the news several years down the line, to the effect that he and Roz had made a brief return to America to secure the purchase of a very American-style GRP-built Mason 44, which they then had shipped across the Atlantic and re-named Constance.
'WELLNIGH PERFECT'
Personally I reckon Constance looks wellnigh perfect, but the feeling that their hero, their God, had gone beyond redemption over to the dark side was almost total among dyed-in-the-wool Cunliffe enthusiasts. Despite that, he and Roz cruise extensively, effectively and inspirationally with Constance, but a summer of unusually persistent bad weather in the Baltic when they were there recently has had the unexpected consequence of a return to his roots.
"Wellnigh perfect" – Tom & Roz Cunliffe's Mason 44 Constance
Tom indulged in escapism from the Baltic gales and precipitation without by sitting down within the very pleasant saloon on Constance and writing a thriller novel about the Caribbean in which the hero boat is a traditional West Country gaff-ketch-rigged Looe lugger style vessel, while the villain is a modern all GRP easy-sail charter boat.
SENSE OF TENSION
Titled Hurricane Force and available through Amazon, it well captures the reasons behind that underlying sense of tension you feel when, after a day of the best Caribbean sailing – which is simply the best sailing in the world – you come into some small island port, and there's an inescapable bat's squeak of awareness that all is not quite as it would like to seem on this cross-roads of the oceans, where drugs and the arms trade can go often go freely about their business, when hundreds of boats will already be going every which way in a flawed paradise.
Interesting take on a thriller cover – with Tom Cunliffe's new novel Hurricane Force, artist Colin Baxter has skillfully conveyed the notion of the traditional vessel being one of the goodies, while the easily-handled plastic-fantastic charter boat in the background has a real hint of menace.
Like all books which try to take sailing to a wider audience, Hurricane Force has its passages where the author is trying to explain something – such as one of the villains being fatally knocked over-board by a perfectly-timed gybe – with many necessary words, whereas a sailing readership would grasp it in two.
OUR QUAINT SAILING LINGO
But that's the way it is. Our quaint sailing lingo has evolved to simplify and avoid communications confusion, but when you use it thoughtlessly for the general reader, it only acts as one great big turnoff between those who don't get sailing, and those who do.
Hurricane Force has a well thought-out and plausible plot with strong characters pushing the boundaries of possibility and coincidence in the way that any successful thriller requires. The readers will find themselves taking sides in classic style, and in all it's just the job for the depths of winter, an unexpected yet welcome by-product of a non-summer in the Baltic.
