Can you remember the first sail you ever had and what in

After owning a series of Dell Quay Rangers, a friend bought a Macwester Wight ketch and asked me + girlfriend out for a sail up the Little Russel. A near gale blew up and the engine stopped because the fuel was draining down into the tank on the leeward side, so we sailed into Herm harbour and tied up. We got a lift back to St Peter Port in a boat called Calvados. There the owner rummaged in a locker and pulled out a bottle of the eponymous stuff. I had never had it before, and have not stopped drinking it since.
I married the girl, and we have 3 sons and a boat of our own; and the fuel tanks are kept topped up so the the engine can always run.
 
My first sail was in my father's "Ythan" dinghy, with him. Later on it was the first boat I ever sailed on my own. It's currently sitting in my garage on its trailer - a bit small for me now, but my crew takes it out regularly.
 
Refueler said:
Its funny reading these ..... I have boats here of various style and size ... but I have always wanted a proper sailing dinghy that I can hop in ... paddle out of channel and then just lazily sail ...

There's a guy who has similar to a Wayfarer who does exactly that some weekends on the river ... I watch him usually with another person in the boat ... quietly slipping along ... no hard in sheets ... just ghosting along ... LOVELY.
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Looking through eBay ... there are some nice dinghys ready to go for not so big money .... trouble is Lockdown over here !!

Looks like I might be towing a dinghy back here once Lockdown and Virus is sorted .....
 
Years ago down at Littlehampton a well dressed gent and his dog came down jus before high water stepped into his Lymington scow and set off round the bay,dog looking out over the combing,never in a hurry .....arrived back to take the mudand step ashore dry shod!
 
Aged 15 on a family holiday in the Med, resort had some big dinghies, probably day-boat sized.. I took one out, figuring out the basics as I went, and only came back in several hours later!

Then, in my early 20's visiting family in Cape Town, my uncle's chum had a sizeable ketch, took a load of us out for a day-trip. The only bit I remember was the owner's daughter - a big girl - being suddenly thrown bloody hard onto me, crushing me in a corner of the cockpit and breaking my sunnies. The prat had had an accidental gybe... and very nearly brained his own daughter.
 
Mirror Dinghy at 40 years of age being taught the rudiments by a 13 year old nephew. Never bettered the thrill of owning that Mirror with any boat since
 
As a child toward the end of the war I was sent to stay with my Uncle Percy at Whiteabbey ( he wasn't really an uncle just a family friend) , he had a clinker built boat in Carrickfergus harbour, he took me out, put a sail up and we watched the Sunderland Flying boats from the Shorts factory taxiing in the lough. I was more impressed by the Sunderlands than the sailing. 25 years later I was getting married after a long courtship, (Student with no money), I had a VW Beetle and a couple of bikes, a Dominator with a box of T100 engine parts to install in it, and a Venom which I used on Saturdays to go to road races. It became clear that I was finished with bikes so I sold one and gave away the other. I got a job which included a rented house with a cement screed floor in the living room , unable to afford carpet, I instead spent £65 on a Mirror dinghy kit and when finished managed to squeeze it out through th window, meantime we lived in the kitchen. Before we got a proper chance to sail the Mirror we were offered two places in a chartered Nic 38 from Crosshaven, it was half price because it was late September our target was the Skelligs but there were two full gales in the week so we only got as far as Bantry, the sea turned black. My wife was very sea sick most of the time but despite the experience she has been sailing ever since, I think she is even more afraid of motorbikes. We used the Mirror for camping weekends on Loch Erne and then bought an Achilles 24 but that is another story.
 
First sail was about 1973 with the Scouts. It was in the Lake District (Derwentwater or Bassenthwaite) in a lovely varnished clinker built dinghy of about 14ft. Second sail was the following day in a Mirror Dinghy,
 
First sail would be at three weeks old, when my parents took me to the Pandora at Restronguet in a Drascombe belonging to the RAF. So I suppose my answer to the question is no, I don’t remember it ;)

First one I remember would be on my grandpa’s yacht, from the Hamble over to Cowes. Probably aged about four. I remember sitting on the bow trying (and failing) to get my feet wet in the bow wave, and that the sunflower spread they had on board was much nicer than the stuff my mum bought. Kids have strange priorities :)

Pete
 
Continued
So we moved out of the old rented house and into another, it was one of the first completed in the first housing development I was responsible for, tasting you own medicine! Our son was born and then our daughter, the Development Commission I was working for had some serviced plots for sale so we bought one,£1950, arranged a mortgage for £9k, got a bridging loan for the construction period ,I drew some plans and we started to self build. My wife was not working ( Looking after 2 kids?) so she did a lot of the work including fixing the roof tiles but I with my special skills did all the carpentry and joinery after work, we did employ an electrician. We found ourselves getting close to finishing the shell with some money over, we increased the loan to £10k and I rushed to order a boat before the April introduction of a new tax called Vat. It was an Achilles 24, in yellow, bare hull inside but keel and deck in place with mast and boom, £1800. Butler Mouldings were struggling to get all the orders out in time but said if we bought a road trailer from them they would drag it over to Fishguard and put it on the overnight ferry to Rosslare in the Republic of Ireland and we could drive on to the ferry hitch it up and take it North.
My brother was a schoolteacher, his school owned a minibus with a towbar so we borrowed it and headed south, arriving around dawn before the ferry, the boat was not on the ferry, consternation, it had been paid for up front to escape the vat, eventually we discovered that they had arrived early in Fishguard, and were sent over on the previous ferry, the boat was now in the pound. We explained we were taking it back North into the UK but they insisted we provided a bond, it was Saturday morning and we needed to be back in the UK before Monday. We eventually got help with a reference to Beagans in Newry who faxed our bond to Rosslare railway station, we furnished it and were able to hitch up and leave. A blue car followed us all the way to N.of Dublin but other than that we had no bother, the boat came home and we parked it on the edge of our building site, I was not allowed to work on it for two years until I had made sufficient habitable space in the house to move in. Meantime I aquired hardboard for templates, teak veneered ply for bulkheads and the joinery and a massive baulk of teak to be sawn up into various planks for furniture, lippings, grab rails etc. I still have have some of that to use. I used to sit inside the bare hull in quiet moments sketching details long before I was allowed to start.
Eventually we got it ready and took it down to EABC in Larne, launched it and took it out toits new mooring, the next day a storm came in and we could not get out for a week, when we did, a rope had worn nearly though my lovely varnished teak gunwhale strake. Our first sail was an evening points race, we just followed the other boats and tried to understand what they were up to. In the summer we took it on a cruise over to the Clyde, a family of four, bucket and chuckit. In the winter we moved it to Logh Neagh to race in their 20 race weekly winter series. I was not entirely self taught, in the evenings I did a Yachtmaster course at the Poly, all big ship stuff, nothing much to do with sailing, semaphore, morse, lights etc. but the Antrim winter series was where we picked up our boat handling and tactical skills.
 
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Sir Winston Churchill. First leg of 1990 tall ships race. Weymouth, Plymouth, A Coruna and Bordeaux. Onboard for 3 weeks and experienced F10 in Bay of Biscay.
Rember enjoying the shore side activities more than the actual sailing and being in port tide up next to the Malcom Miller and the all female crew helped.
Sent by work during second year of my apprenticeship at Bank of England Printing Works.
 
Quandary said:
Continued
So we moved out of the old rented house and into another, it was one of the first completed in the first housing development I was responsible for, tasting you own medicine! Our son was born and then our daughter, the Development Commission I was working for had some serviced plots for sale so we bought one,£1950, arranged a mortgage for £9k, got a bridging loan for the construction period ,I drew some plans and we started to self build. My wife was not working ( Looking after 2 kids?) so she did a lot of the work including fixing the roof tiles but I with my special skills did all the carpentry and joinery after work, we did employ an electrician. We found ourselves getting close to finishing the shell with some money over, we increased the loan to £10k and I rushed to order a boat before the April introduction of a new tax called Vat. It was an Achilles 24, in yellow, bare hull inside but keel and deck in place with mast and boom, £1800. Butler Mouldings were struggling to get all the orders out in time but said if we bought a road trailer from them they would drag it over to Fishguard and put it on the overnight ferry to Rosslare in the Republic of Ireland and we could drive on to the ferry hitch it up and take it North.
My brother was a schoolteacher, his school owned a minibus with a towbar so we borrowed it and headed south, arriving around dawn before the ferry, the boat was not on the ferry, consternation, it had been paid for up front to escape the vat, eventually we discovered that they had arrived early in Fishguard, and were sent over on the previous ferry, the boat was now in the pound. We explained we were taking it back North into the UK but they insisted we provided a bond, it was Saturday morning and we needed to be back in the UK before Monday. We eventually got help with a reference to Beagans in Newry who faxed our bond to Rosslare railway station, we furnished it and were able to hitch up and leave. A blue car followed us all the way to N.of Dublin but other than that we had no bother, the boat came home and we parked it on the edge of our building site, I was not allowed to work on it for two years until I had made sufficient habitable space in the house to move in. Meantime I aquired hardboard for templates, teak veneered ply for bulkheads and the joinery and a massive baulk of teak to be sawn up into various planks for furniture, lippings, grab rails etc. I still have have some of that to use. I used to sit inside the bare hull in quiet moments sketching details long before I was allowed to start.
Eventually we got it ready and took it down to EABC in Larne, launched it and took it out toits new mooring, the next day a storm came in and we could not get out for a week, when we did, a rope had worn nearly though my lovely varnished teak gunwhale strake. Our first sail was an evening points race, we just followed the other boats and tried to understand what they were up to. In the summer we took it on a cruise over to the Clyde, a family of four, bucket and chuckit. In the winter we moved it to Logh Neagh to race in their 20 race weekly winter series. I was not entirely self taught, in the evenings I did a Yachtmaster course at the Poly, all big ship stuff, nothing much to do with sailing, semaphore, morse, lights etc. but the Antrim winter series was where we picked up our boat handling and tactical skills.
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I grew up in Dublin and know well many of the paces you sailed including Loch Neagh. Our stomping ground was Dun Laoghaire Harbour in which my first sail was in a Mirror out of the Inner Coal Harbour. They used to call the entrance to the outer harbour ‘Hell’s Gates‘ on account of the gusty shifty winds! Sailed through there s/h in the Mirror with the mast in the forward step aged 9. Have been hooked ever since.

Love your story, and to take on an unfinished build in the midst of an unfinished build, .....respect ? ?
 
I was about eleven - and it was in an eleven plus on an ex gravel pit in Surrey. I thought it was fantastic!
 
Parents bought a Gremlin 7’6” pram dinghy and we launched it off the beach in Amroth S Wales. We were awash as we never got through the tiny surf. after several more disasters my bother and I were sent to a gravel pit near Droitwich. (Upton Warren Sailing Centre). The first proper sail was therefore in a GP14. There were wooden ones and snazzy new GRP ones at the centre and I can’t remember which was my first sail. It was mid sixties and I do remember I was about 11 and crew to a bored teenage girl. (Too young to notice girls at the time.)
 
It was either an optimist dinghy which my parents bought new, I still recall it was sail number 50, so that dates it. or a 14' midshipman, similar to the silhouette, which they bought from the Boat show in the 60s. Dad towed it behind a Renault 4 and we spent several summer holidays on the Wey canal and Chichester harbour before he discovered the Walton Backwaters, where we'd camp behind the sea wall for three weeks every summer, very much like Secret Waters. On the canal four of us would sleep in the cockpit with a fifth in a tent on the bank.
 
greeny said:
Probably
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I also had my first Sail on Windermere at age 10 in 1964. My father had bought a new Westerly 22 and we set off as a family from the South end of the lake and stopped for lunch near the chain ferry. I must point out my family's only previous boating experience was two motor cruising holidays on the Norfolk Broads. On the passage back the wind and rain kicked in from the South and we ran out of petrol for the outboard. My younger brother and I where banished below whilst my mother and father spent a good few hours learning how to beat down the lake against the flukey winds in this gunter rigged bilge keeler. I mostly remember the water flowing past the cabin windows and my mother and fathers worried faces helming in their souwesters.
 
Babylon said:
Then, in my early 20's visiting family in Cape Town, my uncle's chum had a sizeable ketch, took a load of us out for a day-trip. The only bit I remember was the owner's daughter - a big girl - being suddenly thrown bloody hard onto me, crushing me in a corner of the cockpit and breaking my sunnies. The prat had had an accidental gybe... and very nearly brained his own daughter.
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I've just remembered what happened next... well actually a few decades later. My uncle's chum eventually died, he was found dead in his car having had a heart attack on his way home from a brothel !! o_O
 
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