It seemed like a good idea at the time. Sitting on the jetty in the August sunshine, dangling my feet in the water as I watched the little boats sail by, the thought crossed my mind that I really would like to learn to sail. I'd been on the water before, many times, but always as crew, and now, shorebound and wishing I wasn't, I had a compelling urge to take the tiller myself and sail out onto the wide blue yonder.
Three months later, on a cold, wet
and windy November morning, I wasn't quite so sure.....
I'd gone home from my summer holiday full of enthusiasm and mentioned
to my son that I quite fancied learning to sail. "Why don't you,
then?" he asked, not unreasonably I thought, so I looked up sailing
courses near my home and signed up (and paid) for a course at our local
outdoor pursuits centre. I'd chosen a full week course in mid-October,
reasoning that the weather shouldn't be too bad and hoping for an Indian
summer. But a week before the course was due to start the manager had
telephoned with the news that the October course was cancelled and would
I mind changing to the next one? Which explains how I came to be sitting
with thirteen other intrepid would-be sailors staring glumly at the weather
and asking ourselves why we weren't sitting by the fire at home.
The first day of the sailing course found fourteen of us assembled in the upstairs room of the centre, overlooking the lake. We eyed each other nervously - there were four pairs: a father-son partnership, two brothers, two small boys and the only other female sailors, two twentysomethings at a guess, were together too, the rest of us were on our own - and our ages ranged from the boys who looked about 10 to the brothers who I judged to be in their fifties - I fitted in there somewhere too, but I'm not saying where - a truly motley crew! Of the fourteen, nine (including me) were absolute beginners and the rest had varying experience as sailors, although none were even approaching expert status. So, we started from scratch.
During the course we covered a fair bit of theory : we studied winds and meteorology - I could understand that, and the need for it - you can't do a lot of sailing without the wind and fair-weather sailors like me like to know about the weather well in advance ; we learnt the correct nautical terms for directions of sailing and parts of a boat - I was quite surprised at how many we use in everyday language : "Sailing too close to the wind, " "a long haul," "taking the wind out of someone's sails," but a lot of it was like learning a new foreign language : tack and gybe (turns upwind and downwind) sheets and halyards (ropes to you...) thwarts, bulwarks and scuppers; I can understand the head and foot of a sail, but luff and leach? What's wrong with front and back? We were also supposed to learn a number of knots so I felt quite smug when I looked at the list and realised that I already knew them all, for all the grades, so I contented myself with teaching the others the rhymes and mnemonics I'd used when I was learning them : "There's a rabbit hole alongside a tree trunk, see? The rabbit pops out of the hole, runs round behind the tree and pops back down the hole again." One bowline. We also had to do a round turn and two half-hitches, a figure-of-eight knot, clove hitch (two ways) fisherman's bend, double fisherman's bend and a rolling hitch, although I was surprised to find that a reef knot wasn't on the syllabus (why ever not - after all, the reef knot got its name from its use in reefing up sails!)
But that was all to come - on the first day, our
instructors just came in and introduced themselves, gave us the briefest
of introductions to the principles of sailing, and then announced
that as it was such a perfect day, we would get out on the water as
soon as possible. Perfect day? It was cold, with a biting wind and
driving rain - not MY idea of a perfect day and, judging from the
expressions on the faces around me, not anyone else's either! But
off we obediently trotted, to be shown around our first craft - miniscule
dinghies called "Toppers" because they're small enough to
be carried on top of a (largish) car - and instructed how to put them
together, given dry land tuition on how to steer the things and then
- off onto the water.
One by one we were put through our paces, just out across the bay
near the landing-stage to prove we could sail out, turn and come back
alongside. Eventually my turn came and I discovered just how TINY
the Toppers were as I struggled to change sides to tack back; before
I knew it, I was in the water in between the hull and the sail (which
was now lying on the surface of the water) and trying to work out
where I was and what had happened! Shouts of encouragement and derision
in equal quantities were coming from the shore, so I followed the
helpful suggestions and swam round the hull and, much to my surprise
and everyone else's, managed to right it and climb back in, and sail
back to the jetty.
The rest of the day was spent in sailing up and down the lake, learning how to sail round buoys in a figure-of-eight course and practising coming alongside the jetty. Of course, when the instructors weren't watching me I did it perfectly, but as soon as I had their attention - yes, I did it again : tack - push the tiller across - try to get across the boat quickly - fail - SPLASH!
Which is how I came to be swimming round the hull of an upturned dinghy. As the cold and the wet creeps up round my ears - just remind me again : whose bright idea WAS this anyway?
Postscript : I went on to complete the 30-hour course and passed my RYA Level 1 badge - maybe not quite enough to see me sailing single-handedly round the world, but it's a start...
© Dianne Davies 2002. All rights reserved
This is a shortened version of my sailing lesson escapades
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if you've the stamina for a rather longer read, click here.
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