Quality Time? by Mike Peyton

Mike Peyton - Quality Time? © Fernhurst Books

Published by Fernhurst Books: 14th March 2017; RRP: £14.99

Celebrating 50 years of sailing and the life of 'The World's Greatest Yachting Cartoonist'

Mike Peyton, who has been described as the 'Picasso of Sailing' and 'the world's greatest yachting cartoonist' sadly passed away at the end of January, just days after his 96th birthday.

In order to celebrate his life, and with the full support of his wife Kath, Fernhurst Books is re-publishing his book Quality Time?, originally published in 2005 to celebrate Mike's 50 years of sailing.

Within hours of request, a number of fellow Fernhurst Books authors provided touching personal tributes to Mike for inclusion in this new edition. Accolades were sent from some of the UK's most successful and well-known sailors – a true testament to the high regard in which Mike is held within the sailing community.

A common theme among the tributes was how we, as sailors, see ourselves (or our friends) in Mike's cartoons. Sir Robin Knox Johnston wrote that Mike "was able to hilariously illustrate the situations we had got ourselves into (but did not want to admit), thought we might get into, or had watched others get into". Ian Pinnell commented: "He was able to capture every sailor's feelings / experience through simple drawings and hilarious comments. As a sailor you cannot help smiling while going through his books and relate to almost every scene."

While Mike was mainly a cruising yachtsman, his work was not restricted to that aspect of our sport, as Mike Golding explains, "his humour covered every aspect of boating from Grand Prix sailors getting it hugely wrong at Cape Horn to leisure boaters coming excruciatingly adrift even before they had even left the dock".

The love of Mike's work extends from the UK's top racing sailor – Sir Ben Ainslie wrote: "He had a great ability to bring humour out of what can be a complex and frustrating sport" – to one of our most famous cruising writers – Tom Cunliffe observed that "just about every disaster he depicted has befallen me, as it must have done him". Tom has also kindly provided a never-before-published cartoon that Mike doodled for him a few years back, which appears alongside his tribute.

Mike was undoubtedly blessed with a real skill of observation which made his cartoons so believable. Mike Golding again: "One always had the feeling that he made nothing up, rather he had seen these things first hand."

This ability to observe didn't just inspire his cartoons – it also influenced his boats. As his biographer, Dick Durham, points out, many of the features of his final yacht Touchstone were borne of his experiences on the water. This may have been as a result of the same observation skills that informed his cartoons but, as Dick says: "Unlike his cartoons, no-one laughed at Mike's boats."

In this book, along with 80 of his incomparable cartoons, Mike recounts how he became a yachting cartoonist and his fifty years of sailing. So as well as chuckling at the cartoons themselves there is the opportunity to learn from Mike's 50 years of experience of sailing different boats, meeting a variety of sailors (and landlubbers) and getting into – and out of – some truly hilarious situations.

This second edition, with tributes from 12 other Fernhurst Books authors, will be on sale from the Fernhurst Books stand at the RYA Suzuki Dinghy Show at Alexandra Palace on 4th & 5th March. The book will be formally published on 14th March.

fernhurstbooks.com

About The Author

Mike Peyton lied about his age to join the Army at the start of the Second World War. He spent much of the war in a prisoner of war camp, but escaped to join and fight with the Russian Red Army (told in his memoir An Average War). Mike began sketching as a boy and, after the war, trained at Manchester Art School. He also discovered boating, spending his wedding night camping besides the Thames in London, having got there by canoe! He worked as a freelance cartoonist for New Scientist, Yachting Monthly and Practical Boat Owner, to name but a few. Mike has had over 18 books of yachting cartoons published and in 2016 was dubbed 'the Picasso of sailing' by the Yachting Journalist Association. He passed away in late January 2017, a few days after his 96th birthday.