After more than four years, my monthly yachting column is sailing into the sunset. This will be the last one I write in its present form.

It is hard to imagine a more exciting period than the past five years in which to have sailed and written about sailing: it included the America’s Cup contest in Valencia, the Indian Ocean tsunami in December 2004, the repeated breaking of various speed records and the dramatic encounter between an FT-chartered yacht and the Sydney Opera House.