Sailing childhood

On the TV show about the Volvo Ocean race broadcast in the UK at unholy hours on saturday morning, there was a nice piece on Mike "Moose" Sanderson.

As well as discussing his relationship with fiance Emma Richards he talked about how he got into sailing and yacht racing in particular. In his case he was inspired by the book by Grant Dalton's book "Watch me next time". I had a look for it on both Ebay and Amazon and couldn't find any mention, but Mike described it as his description of racing on Fisher & Paykel in the 89-90 Whitebread, so maybe he meant "Come hell or high water".

For me it was reading the Arthur Ransome children's series "Swallows and Amazons" (see here). Initially for the stories of dinghy sailing on lakes, but later was drawn more to the larger canvas of the bigger boats. The best is probably "We didn't mean to go to sea" in which the children are left onboard a yacht, and then as fog descends they are washed out of Harwich harbour into the North Sea with the wind rising to a near storm. In the end they are forced to sail the boat themselves, ending up in Flushing in Holland.

What got you into sailing?