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. In Catterick (circa 1971-72) he gained his skipper ticket, and sailed the Royal Signals 25 ft Westerly Tiger 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 to Sweden.
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.
