I'm 50 years old and have spent all that time in Essex where I was born and bred and currently sail from the east coast. Although an avid reader from an early age of anything nautical or adventurous I was a late comer to sailing. When I finally discovered it in my mid twenties I was still playing at being a canoeist and mountaineer until sailing finally won when I got married and decided hanging on to a tiller was more sociable that hanging off a mountain.