Nigel Pullman joined the Sherborne School Sailing Club where as a boy he learned to sail dinghies in Poole Harbour. The school owned a fleet of Fireflies, Graduates, Cadets, and one GP 14, all kept (in 1961) at the Poole Harbour YC. Later they moved to a beach at Arne, near the entrance to Wareham.
His parents also acquired a Cadet (Blue Tit) which he sailed at Frensham Pond SC.
At RMAS he had his early experience in Offshore Cruising aboard the Sandhurst yawl Wishstream. This included his first cross channel passges, and cruises in the Channel Islands, as well as one notably unsuccessful participation at Cowes Week. Whilst stationed in Catterick (circa 1971-72) he gained his skipper ticket, and sailed the Royal Signals 25 ft Westerly Tiger (Quicksilver) off the northeast coast of England, as well as in the Solent, where he was also qualified to skipper the R Signals Nicholson 32 (Skywave) between Spithead and Hurst Narrows. Later whilst stationed in BAOR he joined the British Kiel YC and spent many happy times taking soldiers sailing in the engineless 30 ft four berth Cutlasses and Danboats in the southern Baltic, and as far afield as Copenhagen, and once as far as Malmo in Sweden.
For a while after leaving the regular army in 1979 he contined to charter one or other of the Royal Signals yachts, now based in Gosport, through his TA service, and sometimes on TA duty as Adventuroius Training. But in 1983 he was invited to crew a friend’s Westerly 33 foot ketch to Morgat in southern Brittany. The trip proved a very significant point in Pullman’s sailing life, for barely a year or so later, he was invited to take over the share of the boat, and subsequently assumed full ownership of her, which he retains to this day, now nearly 40 years on.
In those years there have been very many cross Channel adventures and family holidays, often involving stays in the pretty Normandy harbour of St Vaast. But there have been many trips eg to the Channel Islands, St Malo, and further down the French west coast, once as far as Sable d’Olonne.
Now the age of boat and skipper mean time on board is spent pottering in the Beaulieu River, her home port and the same moporing since new in 1978
House flag of his Westerly 33 foot ketch, Philomare.
The flag (first carried in the Lord Mayor’s Show of 2012) depicts features from Pullman’s coat of arms. They are the central roebuck, being the symbol of his livery company, the Leathersellers; the Katharine Wheel, symbolising the Bath & Wells church of which he is Patron (St Katharine’s in Felton, Somerset), St Katharine’s Dock, the spiritual home of the World Traders’ Company (of which he is an Hon Liveryman), and the ship’s wheel of Philomare; the salmon pink stripes refer to his 18 years working for the Financial Times; and the red and white chequered border is a nod to the City of London.
