He was sailing - he was sailing! Youthful yachtsman Michael Perham has cruised his way into the record books single-handedly by sailing across the Atlantic at the age of 14. And won the admiration of every fellow schoolboy in the process.

The wide-eyed youngster pulled off perhaps the most incredible sporting feat of modern times this week and you have to take off your nautical hat to the achievement. It isn’t often that sailing splashes onto these pages but there’s always a first time.

The bottom line here is that Michael got out of bed at his Potters Bar home and decided to do something amazing. The fact he comes from Hertfordshire and sails boats is neither here nor there. But he really should have been doing his chemistry homework rather than messing about on yachts.

Now it could be said that sailing is one of the snooty, elitist sports that only the rich and famous can afford. Michael was simply playing with one of those aristocratic toys that Chay Blyth and Sir Francis Chichester was once given.

When you think of sailing, your thoughts immediately turn to the South of France and film stars with fake tans. But for this adventurous young boy, life had already presented one of its greatest challenges. Nothing could have been more frightening than the sight of the Atlantic at its wildest. Yet here was a young man who weighed up the risks, dropped anchor and set out on the longest of journeys.

You have to wonder why a lad of 14 was allowed out onto the sea after nine o’clock in the evening. Surely he should have been in the local youth club or perhaps taking excessive amounts of alcohol in a sleazy nightclub.