‘Everyone will miss Don, but few will miss his copy’ – Remembering a sailing writing legend

Dick Durham remembers Don Street, the highly skilled sailor and writer who passed away earlier this year at the age of 93

There’s a scene in the film, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, where outlaws Paul Newman and Robert Redford watch from a crag as the distant posse chases them. To their dismay they recognise, from his white hat, a tracker whose tenacity invariably results in arrest.

In his later years Don Street’s arrival at the boat show reminded me of this cinematic scene as his presence was flagged up by his battered canvas Tilly hat which he always wore ashore or afloat. The hat bobbing and weaving through the crowd would see editors ducking behind display panels, rather than have to turn down a screed of ungrammatical typescript as the bearded shellback doggedly pursued another commission.

News of his death last month aged 93, had me thumbing through an old log book covering the night and day I spent with Don and his Irish wife, Trish, for a YM profile. It was July 2005 when I joined his boat, Iolaire, an engineless Bermudian cutter built in 1905, which lay on a mooring in a very crowded Cowes Road.

She was a beautiful craft, a flush-decked, low freeboard, spoon-bowed hull with a bewitching counter stern. Down below the accommodation was like a Middle-Eastern souk: with her various compartments demarcated with grubby curtains stretched along rusty wires.

Nestling with her legs tucked up beneath her was the impossibly glamorous Trish and next to her the grizzle-bearded old skipper, his pensive, blue eyes, intelligent, but unsmiling. Like all old wooden boats which are used rather than exhibited, Iolaire looked shabby and worn. Fastenings weeped rust down the frames; the cabin sole was dark with ingrained grime, and mildew sought out areas of the deckhead where no J-cloth could reach.

But there was a delicious smell emanating from the solid-fuel oven: roast chicken cooked in bacon. Later this was served with baked spuds and Isle of Wight green beans as Don ran through his long life afloat.

He started sailing aged 12 on the east coast of his native North America later becoming a professional skipper, and earned a name among the yachting cognoscenti as a ‘hot little sailor,’ he unblushingly announced. Soon Don was writing his own pilot guides and then his own charts of the then not so well-known Caribbean. He turned his transatlantic voyages into articles – many for YM – on ocean sailing.

The next morning the breeze was light and from the east, and I was astonished at Don’s skill in sailing Iolaire stern-first under a backed mizzen sail alone skirting down the side of an incoming Red Funnel ferry and tracking in a dead straight line through the moorings until we were out clear in The Solent.

We spent the day trying out different sail configurations to suit the light airs. I found her to have a fair bit of weather helm as Don quietly commanded: ‘Keep a bubble in the main, keep her up a bit the helm will ease…’ It did, too.

Don was an Honorary Member of the Cruising Association and I was amused by Camilla Herrmann, editor of the CA’s house magazine who wrote, ‘One of my predecessors said of Don, “The man is a legend, but his copy is a nightmare.

When I apologised for hacking Don’s prose, he told me: ‘My writing career started as a result of two dinners with John Steinbeck, who said “Forget about talent. To be a writer is a case of putting your ass on a hard wooden chair six days a week, six hours a day and writing.” Turning to me, he said “Kid, you tell a good story, why don’t you try writing?” I replied “I can’t spell or punctuate.” To which Steinbeck said, “What the hell do you think secretaries and editors are for? Write!”’

Everyone will miss Don, but few will miss his copy! Don was made an Honorary Member of the CA in 2021. He had been an ordinary member of the CA since 1999, but in his 90s decided to giveup cruising, although he sailed his vintage Dragon at home in Ireland.

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