My introduction to Sailing!

Sailing on Sydney Harbor is a completely different experience to the rough brutal English Channel experience I had earlier in the year. My fun spirited, adventurous, indefatigable friend here, also from Bristol Rowing Club introduced me to Friday night sailing, they call it the twilight session.

We arrived at Sydney Yacht Squadron – the most prestigious sailing club in Sydney (Prince Philip is a patron!) and I was introduced to the Skipper, his wife and their impressive 34ft Beneteau, a large sailing yacht.

Now I don’t have much experience in sailing at all apart from the odd experience between the ages of 14 and 17 I trapezed off the side of a Fireball, great fun until we capsized in the freezing dark Welsh waters. Then there was a few outings on a Laser where the friends Dad form of teaching was to just shout louder in hope we would understand in the end!!?! And then a couple of times on my Grandad’s boat here in Australia. Sailing has been a huge part of his life and I have always admired his strong passion for the sport.

So this Friday evening session is in fact a race but 20 mins into it, the red wine is opened and nibbles and dips are passed round! The sun is setting, we are in Sydney harbor with the Bridge and Opera house so elegantly poised, sea breeze, good company – I can’t imagine a better way of ending the week than this. Everyone has their jobs and works well together on board. There is slight tension between crew now and again but nothing like what was to come on my future sailing expeditions!

We all come in to the club, more wine/beer dinner and I get invited to come back next week to help crew, now with an increasing knowledge of what has to be done on board. As I am so enthusiastic about taking up the sailing I am then introduced to a guy who is organizing a course on sailing Ynglings, a boat slightly bigger than the Laser but less vulnerable to capsizing… apparently. He says I need to be at the club for 9.30am. I immediately stop drinking and put my self on a train back home.

I arrive at the club bright and early to discover I am being instructed by an Olympic Sailor and using her own Yngling boat she used in Athens! It was theory in the morning and sailing with practice of putting the spinnaker up in the afternoon. I actually felt very, very sea sick towards the end (something that I know I am vulnerable to) and the boatman had to extract me from the sailing vessel and into his speed boat where we powered round the harbor checking on each of the other boats progress while my sickness subsided – I was having terrific fun so I told him and to which he replies ‘well this is only half throttle!!!’ and powers the speed up even more! I got back on the Yngling for the last 10 mins and felt OK. I was then informed I was entered into a regatta the following day where we would do 6 races which would take about 5 hours!! Normal for a sailing regatta I am told. I practically only learnt to sail in a day and even then I was ill but nether the less I couldn’t turn down this opportunity of racing with an Olympic Athlete!

In the morning Lucy my lovely Godmother comes down to the club with me and I manage to get her on one of the speedboats watching our race. The kind gentleman’s daughter is racing in my boat too. So Lucy is whisked away in his Jag to his 3 story house looking over the harbor with speedboat parked out front. The next time I see Lucy she is sitting on the top deck of this speedboat, drinking tea and eating sandwiches, bobbing a few meters away from our finish line.

I made sure I took my Kweles! Which hadn’t worked on the Channel so my faith seriously needed to be with stored now.

Karen the Olympian was amazing, for almost every race we were first off the start and if we weren’t, as soon as we tacked we would be ahead again, she read the water with complete natural instinct and a calm confidence. I was the forignhand where I control the jib sheet and attempted to put the spinnaker up. I should have a lot more jobs but this was about my limits of sailing knowledge! It was great fun and I didn’t feel sick once! To my astonishment we won the regatta – mainly down to Karen’s superior instructing. Once back on land we received our Gold medals, drank lots of champagne and a BBQ to end the day. I was then invited to race on Tuesday night – The Women’s Yngling twilight race!

Tuesday came and I raced with predominant members, Hamish and Louise. This was a lot more serious and I way out of my comfort zone, at one point I thought I might be more help if I jumped out and swam back! I am far from fluent in the technical terms of sailing lingo, they might as well have been talking in some far outback aboriginal tribal language from what I was understanding. Each rope controlling not only different sails but different parts of the sails, and then there is the sea, yes that big vast blue thing that has now turned into this manuscript which needs to be read meticulously to anticipate your every move to ensure the boat is set up on the most dynamic course possible. For what I thought was supposed to be a friendly affair of a race was actually more similar to a heated argument between jail-mates the whole way round! Back in the club we all met and I was asked if I had fun?? I wasn’t sure I had but I knew it wasn’t enough to put me off, so replied ‘oh yes it was great fun’. Secretly thinking I need to get good at sailing FAST or I wont last a second longer. Once the Champaign was flowing (they seem to celebrate a lot!) the outing I had just experienced turned into this fantastic event that I couldn’t wait to happen again! As always I want to take the bull by the horns and get stuck in as much as possible so when Louise suggests joining her the next day for 2 races on a Sydney 38 (another type of huge sailing yacht) I can’t refuse!

Another beautiful day in Sydney! I meet Louise at Milsons Point and we walk across Sydney Harbor Bridge – I have to pinch myself now and again as I feel so lucky to be here. I love this city more and more everyday. It rained a couple of days ago as I was walking back from the station but was actually very refreshing and I always notice how the wet weather enhances the wonderful smell of the eucalyptus trees that line the streets.

The Sydney 38’s are amazing yachts, so big and have a huge presents in the harbor especially when sailing along together in a pack. This time four of us girls have the job of being dead weight on the high side of the boat when keeled over. This is in fact a very important role as it enables the boat run faster! One of the few rolls I have actually mastered! The blazing sun, blue cloudless sky, legs dangling over the edge, high above the seas splash as the yacht blissfully slices through the ocean. The Skipper got a bit hot headed at one point, something or someone had made an error when going about and we were now being over taken – he shouted to the crew ‘that’s it no more beer!’ By this point we had only had one each and I hardly think having the job as ballast weight another beer would make us any better or worse at our job!! Maybe for the more active crew members it would. Anyway it was soon forgotten and back in the docks we all sat in the cock pit (I am still learning the lingo so that could be wrong!??) and lots of lovely canapé type food came out followed by more beer and wine. Louise insisted we did the twilight session, so another Sydney 38 opposite preparing to go out shouted across if any of us wanted to crew so Louise and I piped up and jumped across. This was a shorter race and a younger crew, everyone dashing about their duties despite the fact most people were knew to each other. It was quite an eventful outing as two of the head sails broke, thousands of $ worth of sail gone in an hour. They seemed amazingly chilled out for the damages that occurred!

This sailing lark definitely attracts the most pro-active personality because it’s highly important to look busy this kind of earns your place on the boat, everyone is constantly looking for a job and just getting on with it. My uncle told me when he’s at work he looks busy by walking round the office with a piece of paper in his hand (the paper has nothing on it!) perhaps if I walk around the boat with some rope in my hand this will have the same impression, just while I am learning anyway!

We had another fantastic sail as the sun was setting. Afterwards we all headed to the club bar where all the crews are mingling with each other, the atmosphere is buzzing and I am invited to race on various boats almost everyday next week. Some people I hear call this a boat whore but I see it as fast tracking my boat skills so I can start pulling my weight instead of being just dead weight!!! The down side is I am never going to find a job if I am sailing all the time! But this has to be the most perfect place in the world to learn to sail.

Cherbourg via the Isle of White (a sailing experience that questioned weather I would ever sail again!)

Butleigh rugby club as many well know has a plethora of traditions; one of these is the annual yacht trip to Cherbourg to pick up refreshments for the club. On the evening of July 16th four people; Mike Rodgers, Chris English, Julia and Antonia Maunder assembled in Butleigh’s Rose and Port pub before setting off in Mike’s specially purchased family car to meet up with James piggy Pearse the captain of the ship. Now there has been some speculation as to whether girls should be allowed to join in on this sort of thing but in the spirit of the new Butleigh committee and the fact that Julia has out drunk several Butleigh players several times it was decided she should go.

Now Mike doesn’t just share his first name with Schumacher for nothing and within 10 minutes he had his front seat companion, Chris sweating, praying for his life and holding on to the passenger door handle with the grip of a python tackling ambitious sized prey.
Little did Chris know this would be the smoothest part of the journey ahead.
Arriving at the south coast port minus only a wing mirror Chris was sent immediately to the yacht to unpack his enormous suitcase on wheels.

In Butleigh style the trip kicks off by meeting at a bar in Poole where skipper Piggy moors his yacht ‘H.M.S. Scudamore’ in a near by marina. The first leg of the cross channel journey is a purely technical affair, that of boarding the boat and chugging half a mile negotiating the harbour lifting bridge before mooring up and returning to the pub.
The following morning, much to the astonishment of Skipper Piggy everyone was up at 5am and ready to help. Mike set about making bacon and egg baguettes as they cruised out of the calm warm waters of Poole harbour with the sun shining brightly in a big blue sky. They were, however heading out, unbeknown to everyone except Piggy into Gale force 10 winds complete with howling thunderstorms and reduced visibility. Chris, by this point was down below donning an apron, one of the many practical items he had packed in his case. Strangely he only packed one pair of trousers which as he later discovered wasn’t to be enough when in a mid channel nautical incident involving heavy seas his flies broke and thereafter he had to spend the entire weekend flying low. This was to attract a great deal of attention in a bar later that night.
The crew cleared the idyllic white cliffs that shelter the Dorset coast and started to get into rougher waters. As the boat lurched down one of the first larger waves Chris in his marigolds and apron was sent flying backwards and lay sprawled out on the floor of the boat. Julia and Chris at this point were looking decidedly pale. It was clear there was soon to be re-sampling opportunities of the culinary delights of Mike’s breakfast baguette and Antonia was duly sent to get life jackets and ties lines for them both. Seconds later Mike lurched half over the side heaving and retching coming up a few moments later with blood and worse all over his face. Julia and Chris soon followed suit.

Thirty minutes later, Antonia joined this elite group leaving only Captain Piggy still digesting his breakfast. Gagging noises heard coming from his direction cast doubt as to whether this would last. By this time Chris was doing a chameleon impression having matched the colour of his face to his green coat. Piggy with winds screeching through the rigging voiced his concern that no one was having fun and asked if anyone would like to turn around; ‘we have a further 9 hrs of this to make France’ he shouted. Mike with patches of scraggy dried blood on his face insisted despite not being able to show any enthusiasm that ‘everyone is loving it’. Piggy then asks Chris directly, who at this point is looking close to death how he is and from somewhere a quiet heroic voice says ‘lets push on’ before closing his eyes. Julia and Antonia aren’t caving in either. Piggy in a vain attempt not to put the crew off sailing for life (to the secret relief of all on board) turns around.

Almost back in Poole harbour and most of the sickness is passing, terra firma is within grasp and there is an eager anticipation to take that first step on to land. Showers are also high on the agenda particularly for Antonia as she has inexplicably managed to throw up down her own back. Piggy however isn’t going to let anyone off, rounding up cats would be a simpler task than getting this rabble back on board after stepping on dry land. ‘The Isle of White I believe has four vin yards’ he shouts and turns the boat about and a new heading is set for the Island’s main port!
On arrival at Yarmouth, Isle of White, the two nearest vin yards are located and the crew set out by foot. British wine doesn’t have the greatest reputation and after sampling the 5 bottles on offer (no red because it’s all in the local co-op) they left feeling obliged to purchase a couple of token bottles. Completely sober, it’s decided to get back in the Butleigh tradition and head straight for a pub, Piggy knows just the one.

The ‘Saltys’ Inn is famous for its live music and fantastic atmosphere during the summer months. Within an hour Julia and Antonia are dancing on the tables along with half of the population of the Island. Chris is singing a reluctant duet with the DJ and Piggy is making his own moves on an attractive brunette, taking full advantage of the lack of space or maybe dirty dancing is just his style.

2pm and the music is over they head back to the harbour only to discover the yacht’s dingy not where they left it. Mike had tied the dinghy up using simple Plimsoll knots but had made up for it with sheer quantity ruling out the possibility of it having drifted away.

Captain Piggy who in the pub had been the ‘skilled‘ winner of a pacey card drinking game ‘shithead’ is by inclination a mariner of stern social etiquette but was now a wild boar, charging up and down the marina before spotting his dinghy being rowed a short way out by two men. He shouted at them ‘get back here!’ and much to everyone’s surprise they did. As it arrived at the steps the two men quite little and very large tried to run past, little squeezed through Chris’s legs but large had the wroth of a raging piggy who unleashed a well aimed haymaker shouting ‘you’re swimming’ as large fell back into the harbour waters.

Piggy having gained control of the dinghy fired up the outboard motor and to the concern of his own crew headed fearlessly towards the men’s yacht to take on the rest of their twelve strong stag group leaving the two miscreants standing on the shore quaking and stranded. Eventually after a wholesome exchange of abuse with the antagonists Piggy was persuaded back towards the faithful H.M.S. Scudamore.

The following morning the expedition complete with just the two bottles of Isle of White wine arrived back in Poole harbour delighted and happily exhausted with their fulfilling but unfulfilled venture.

Two weeks later a new crew including the battered but unbowed Mike Rodgers under resolute Captain Piggy set sail for France once more.
by Antonia Maunder