Some might think it a bit off to take issue with a sister publication but, you know what, I’ve been mulling it over and I reckon it’s a public service to anyone aged over 30.

A few weeks’ ago Yachting Monthly reported from start of the Vendée Globe race and described the French sailing maestro and race favourite Loïck Peyron as a ‘gnarly old veteran’.

Peyron celebrated his 49th birthday this week.

Obviously, with all the current ‘youngest round the world’ bids going on (16-year-old Mike Perham, 17-year-old Zac Sunderland, and another plan by 16-year-old Australian Jessica Watson) ambitious sailors intent on making history will soon have to put their kids’ names down at birth. But still?gnarly and old at 49?

What strange transmogrification is occurring in the venerable chambers of YM? Have the beards gone and the weathered brows been Botoxed? Have the red trousers been replaced by board shorts? Is a new generation of lean young striplings at the helm who regard anyone aged over 40 as, like,somajorly decrepit?

Or is poor old Peyron deemed a veteran because he’s been successful since his twenties and done so much since?

Let’s hope the latter, or that’s me sliding towards the scrapheap. Come to think of it, woe betide the average reader of YM (median age: 56). Grizzled old fossils.