Sailing - It's a Mini Adventure

As promised, here is the story of my sailing adventures. You might think it slightly late, but then, I only said it would be "tomorrow", and as the wize old druid guy in Asterix used to say, "tomorrow never comes." So there.

There wasn't much wind to begin with, so we started off by learning all kinds of crazy knots - I can now bend a rope in a number of bizarre ways to do such exotic things as stopping it slipping through a hole or tying a boat to a post.

Next up was capsize drill. We were all taken out onto the lake in a larger boat and then all took turns in being capsized out of a smaller one, and then trying to get it upright again. The temperature of the water was, as I have written in a groundbreaking article in science journals, actually below absolute zero. Nevertheless, we cheerfully pulled on ropes and things until the boat was once again the right way up. Huzzah.

The wind then picked up, so we went for our first sailing trip, with our every move being carefully co-ordinated by an instructor. For any nautically-minded people, this was in a Wayfarer boat, which is nice and stable and roomy. Lovely.

The next day we were thrown to the lions. (Metaphorically, obviously. Lions don't swim.) We were all sent out in pairs sans instructor. I was in a Topaz, which is a small, fairly fast boat that put me in mind of a plastic bathtub, with a 14-year-old small child. Thus, responsibility was on me to make sure that we didn't cause the deaths of everyone on the lake, including, most importantly, me.

We were clipping along nicely when one of the random guys who'd helped us with the capsize drill pulled up alongside in his Laser and asked me if I wanted a go. Not wishing to appear impolite, I agreed, and so we switched boats. I soon found out, to my chagrin, that the Laser was, being a racing boat, the least stable craft ever devised. The merest breath would make it tip alarmingly, and I imagine that if a squirrel in the woods bordering the lake had farted, all would have been lost. If the Topaz was a bathtub, the Laser was a teatray.

I managed to keep it upright for about 15 minutes, but finally the inevitable happened. I capsized. I managed to right the boat, and then 2 minutes later, capsized again. At this point the boat's owner, realising his mistake, relieved me of command and I returned to the Topaz, which we carried on sailing for the rest of the morning. The afternoon was spent sailing a Seafly, which was similar to the Wayfarer, and thus joyously did not capsize at all.

That's a long blog. But overall it was great, and I can highly recommend it as a place to learn!

Glenridding Sailing Centre