Boulder to London

Sorry about the sparse updates…I’ve had a fairly busy couple of weeks. Hopefully more to come on that later next week.

Sailing school turned out to be good fun. I was with a group of 4 others, Alistair, Helen, Candice and Ferris. Alistair and Helen are married and live about 100 yards from us in Clapham. They started sailing last year in Greece and took the Day Skipper theory class over the winter. They were definitely the most competent on the boat. Candice is an Australian who has lived in London for quite some time and done some crewing/sailing on corporate days including a trip on Leopard, a very nice racing yacht. Ferris is from Singapore and has also done a bit of sailing in his time, although he was probably the most inexperienced of the group.

We arrived on Friday night a few weeks ago. We were supposed to show up at 8, but I got a bit sidetracked between the train station and the ferry dock (about 100 metres) and ended up in a Portsmouth pub for dinner and a beer. When I arrived, they let me know that I’d be sharing a berth with Ferris (I’ll remember to book two spots next time), who was going to be a bit late as he was stuck in traffic. Our instructor, Bob, was an experienced sailor who had spent 30 to 40 years on and around boats including yacht deliveries, teaching and his own recreational sailing. We quickly realised that we were all city workers and had a bit of a chat about getting out of London for the weekend.

Once Ferris arrived we headed over to a floating restaurant called the lightship for dinner and a few drinks. Since I had already had a bite to eat, I enjoyed a liquid dinner. The rest of the weekend was spent sailing around the Solent with trips to the Cowes and the Beaulieu River. The weather was good, but I soon realised that good weather on the Solent isn’t anything to write home about. Our time on deck was spent in full waterproofs over several layers of thermals with the kettle ready on the stove to boil up the next pot of water for coffee and tea. We took turns helming, pulling ropes and plotting courses. All in all, it was a good weekend that we used to get familiar with the boat while Bob assessed our skills. I think the only excitement came when Helen was bringing us into Cowes and a boat came up behind here very quickly. The guy at the helm was looking towards the pontoons (docks) and wasn’t paying attention to anything in front of him. Once we yelled out, he took some evasive action to avoid us.

Weekend two started out the same as the first…show up, get out stuff stowed and have dinner at the lightship. It was a ‘bank holiday’ weekend and the weather was supposed to be nice. We were expecting it to get busy out on the water and were hoping to get an early start on Saturday. During the second weekend of Day Skipper training, we were each supposed to plan a simple passage from one port to the next. Alistair got the first shot and brought us out of Portsmouth to head up towards Chichester. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much wind so we motored most of the way. As we entered the opening to the port, we were apparently a few metres too far over and briefly ran aground. This wasn’t a huge deal, as we were able to free ourselves quickly, but provided a great opportunity to poke fun at Alistair through the rest of the weekend. It was actually a very good experience as I now know what to do if this were to occur under my watch.

Once free, we continued into the harbour and found a place to anchor for lunch. Lunch was nice, but as we were pulling up to head back out, a dinghy that was sailing amongst the anchored yachts caught its keel on an anchor chain, leaned over into the parked yacht and quickly snapped its own mast off. Helen and I were at the helm of our boat and were the only ones to witness the carnage as the rest of the crew was up on the bow trying to get the anchor chain straightened out. From Chichester, Helen sailed us over to Bembridge where we had our second harbour near miss. The harbour was packed and a boat entering in front of us got a bit pinned between a few boats. As he tried to maneuver, people quickly ran down pontoons and emerged from cabins below to put out fenders and help this guy get straightened out. Once sorted, we found our place and hiked into town for a nice pub dinner before turning in as we had to be up early to get the boat out during high tide.

On Sunday AM, the wind had picked up considerably and it was Candice’s turn to skipper the boat. We were going to sail up-wind to East Cowes for lunch. Candice wanted to make sure that we all got a good crewing experience and called for a tack about every 5 minutes. While we made fun of her in the process, I think it was actually a really good experience and way to learn. In East Cowes, we had our third harbour incident. Bob took the helm from Candice as we had to come up alongside a fairly expensive boat. On the other side of the open spot was a family out on their boat having lunch. Bob managed to come in a little sideways (he blames the poor handling of the boat and the fact that we were in his way), but everyone scrambled to get things straightened out. I was on one side pushing us off the boat, Alistair leapt a few feet over water to get to the pontoon we were aiming for, the father from the boat next door gave up his glass of wine to pull on a line, while the rest of the crew rearranged fenders to prevent damage.

We spent the next few hours tied up, had some lunch, got showers and prepared for the next passage. It was my turn to skipper the boat and Bob wanted to give me some quick lessons in tidal calculations and basic navigation. In concept I understand all of it, in practice I’m all over the map (literally). I completed my passage over to the Hamble River without mishap and got us tied up at the pontoon. We were only going to be there for a few hours as we had to do a 4 hour night passage as part of the course. We dinner, some tea and waited for it to get dark so that we could head out. The night passage was very cold, but we were able to practice sailing along a course using the boat’s compass. After several hours of sailing and a few close encounters with large shipping vessels, we tied back up on the pontoon for our final night on the boat.

On Monday the wind picked up considerably which was a bit of a problem for our scheduled man overboard drills. We sailed downwind from the Hamble River back to Portsmouth in 20+ knot wind, blowing sea spray and a few reefs in the sail to keep things under control. It was Ferris’ turn to be skipper which he quickly delegated to Alistair and myself as he wanted to spend his time watching the GPS from down below. We arrived in Portsmouth Harbour around 3:00, completed our man overboard drills in the protected waters and put the boat away. All in all it was a great experience and I’m looking forward to building miles and experience.