David Dimbleby sails the UK coast in his own boat

The first episode of TV veteran David Dimbleby’s BBC programme in which he appears to sail around the coast of the UK in his own boat, aired last night.

What’s it like? I’ve only seen half of the first episode so far, but Dimbleby is likeable, as always, and sails his Heard 28 fibreglass-hulled gaff-rigged cruising boat based on traditional Falmouth fishing boats with a crew made up of his maintenance man, a cute dog and two photogenic young people.

The whole thing is beautifully shot, as you’d expect. The Heard 28 bustles along, wallows a bit in some rough water, and its skipper calls in here and there and talks about various bits of British history that take his fancy.

The programme reflects the experience of sailing pretty well, though glosses over the technical and practical issues very lightly indeed. The historical and local interest bits are deliberately unobvious – which is fine, but they’re also a bit light-weight side.

It’s also not exactly slow sailing – the now fashionable idea of stopping everywhere one can and seeing as much as possible while meeting lots of people) – but I guess TV presenters who have to be accompanied by a second boat for filming purposes can’t be Dylan Winter, who seems to stop to look at everything, and talk to everybody.

I fear what this will turn out to be is a nice vehicle for a popular TV personality to share a bit more of his personality with his fans, rather than the more serious offering some of us might have hoped for. Time will tell.

In the meantime, however, what I’ve seen so far does convey the excitement and beauty of the sea, and something of the experience of sailing on it. If that message is seen an understood by a large part of the British population – well, that’s definitely a positive.