At absolutely no point in Swallows & Amazons does Susan cry John look out theres a patch of shit-eating jellyfish ahead! Yacht racing
- a world of privilege & money. Beautiful women bronzed men & Simon le Bon explaining that he used to be in a b&. Its not like that for everyone. Somewhere much much further down the ladder it all looks very different. As a teenager Michael Hutchinson raced tiny plywood dinghies on Belfast Lough amid shoals of sewage-eating jellyfish. For him sailing became the kind of obsession that often as not ends with a psychiatric intervention. Turning pro was his only dream. Then at the age of eighteen driven to despair by his own unremitting mediocrity he gave up. But he never stopped dreaming about it
- what was he missing out on? How good or bad had he really been? Had it really been a wasted youth? At last fifteen years later he went back. Missing the Boat" is the story of his comeback season on the South Coast of England in Ireland & in the glamorous resorts of the Mediterranean. Its about the yachts the people the regattas & just what it was like to dive back into a world that had become entirely alien."