I learnt about sailing from that.....

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time I, subverted by a strange madness that afflicts sailors who live hours of driving from the sea, stood at Sandbanks Yacht Company slip with the wind howling from the SE.

As we unloaded the 9ft long sailing dinghy from the roof of the car we were comforted by the number of obvious dinghy sails we could see in the harbour.

There was much shaking of heads, and resultant loss of developing dewdrops from byestanders, as we set off for a trip around Brownsea. But having got up at six in the morning and driven 100 miles we were going sailing.

Needless to say we had our hands full. The boat had never planed before and we couldn't stop it planing. Unable to do much other than hang on we rocketed up Poole harbour, through the comforting dinghy fleet which was made up of various Olympic hopefuls who were breaking their boats in the conditions, until we hit an island. Having been out of my depth all morning it was no surprise that on stepping off the boat I vanished into 10ft of water.

Recovering we carried the boat over the island, relaunched and beached her at Arne for lunch. Leaving her we walked to Wareham, got a taxi to Sandbanks to collect the car. Special arrangements were made with the Warden at Arne to get the car through the nature reserve so that the boat could be recovered.

Oh! and we ripped the exhaust off going down the track.
 
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Ah, yes.....

On the whole, I think we spend less time on the water since moving to live beside it than we did when we lived 100 miles away (which is about as far as its possible to get from the sea in these islands) Then it was - pack up and go come Friday afternoon and sail come what may. Now its - "how does the weather look? Feel like a trip?" Of course, we were younger then....
 
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Stop it, Tom! My laughter is disturbing the others...

...trying to e-mail their bank managers in Hortanet. pass me a hanky, someone, I'm crying with laughter! Brilliant!
 
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