In my early teens I read Arthur Ransome's books, The Coot Club and The Big Six. They're set in Norfolk and the kids in the books go sailing on the Broads. They impressed me so much that I persuaded my father to take me on holiday to the Norfolk Broads where we had great fun teaching ourselves to sail, all on the impetus of Ransome's books.

The next year we hired a yacht, but my mother refused to come because it was much too dangerous. It was the only holiday my father and I had on our own. I kept a parody version of a ship's log and I made a book out of it when I got home, which was the first proper book I ever wrote. A ship's log has the weather and the wind force and little map showing where you've gone and I put all of that in it.

My father was called the captain and I was the Number Two and the Number Two did all the work while the captain fished and went to the pub.

It was written in a serious seaman's way but I sent it up as I wrote it. I still have the book, although I'm sure it would be a bit embarrassing now.

My father didn't want to go and do it again, so I hired a boat the following summer with a friend who wanted to go into the merchant navy. We were pretty incompetent seamen, but we loved the whole idea of messing about on the boat and pretending we were all grown up.

At the time, I would have been very surprised if you had told me that I would go on to win the Carnegie Medal of which Arthur Ransome was the first recipient, so it's all come full circle.

• Aidan Chambers is the winner of this year's Carnegie Medal for Children's Literature for his novel Postcards from No Man's Land, published by Bodley Head.