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

[oldmanofthehills]

My first boat trip was in row boat in Christchurch Harbour/Mudeford about 63 years ago I fell in love with the sea . My father loved to live by the coast but sadly got seasick on a mill pond and not observant of others wants so nothing much for me till I went to school far away from actual sea. My first actual sail was a Mirror dinghy on Lea Valley flooded gravel pit about 53 years ago and there was no going back.

 

[Deleted member 36384]

Mirror Dinghy, Strathclyde Country Park, Lanark Schools Sailing Association, RYA Elementary Course. Started to race 420's then commenced crewing in a GP14 for a few seasons. The Head of Biology ran our school sailing club (modern comprehensive, inner city school) and owned a GP14. Back then, in the late 70's, it was a just a phone call to my parents (and others) asking if I would like to crew for him on his GK29. A few of us started crewing regularly in races, both round the cans and offshore races, as well as just cruises. You can not do that now without significant administrative hurdles to jump over. Later, I learned offshore sailing through council subsidised courses at Outdoor Education Centres which lead to jobs as a dinghy instructor and position on a sail training yacht.

 

[johnmcc]

Clinker-built Norfolk Dinghy on Barton Broad at Easter 1962. Hertfordshire Schools Sailing Camp. I capsized it and it almost sank, and when the rescue boat arrived I wasn't rescued from the freezing water but told to stuff the canvas jib in the top of the centre-plate case to stop the boat refilling, and to keep bailing while I was towed back to Barton Turf. Safety equipment was one kapok -filled "life jacket" and a tin bowl for a bailer.

 

[ryanroberts]

Rather lamely, A 32' Bavaria on flotilla with no tuition in Greece at the age of 37. All my childhood and later boating was with engines. My father was an ex saturation diver and ran a SCUBA diving club, so I spent quite a lot of my childhood under the water rather than on it.

 

[Crowblack]

Stressed out 30 something wife bought me a dinghy course on a gravel pit in Cambridgeshire - GP14 - terrific instructor - let me loose solo quite quickly. Always remember the exhilaration of coming through a tack, sheeting in, leaning out to take the weight, feet under the strap, one hand each for the mainsheet and tiller, feeling for the wind, looking for cats paws on the surface. at the tell tails on the shrouds, thrilling at the acceleration as she made for the further shore - wonderful - can see and feel it even now 40 odd years later.

 

[Pirx]

A tiny aluminium ( Birmabright alloy ) dinghy on a lake at the edge of Epping Forest aged about 12: no instruction whatever but I knew, more or less, what to do as I had been obsessed with Swallows and Amazons and reading boaty stuff.
First serious sail was on a Falmouth quay punt belonging to a school friend's family, from Burnham to Falmouth. Never looked back, though some people think I have never looked forward ....

 

[Boathook]

I can't actually remember as dad (as well as mum) was into sailing so it just happened. I had my own Cadet when 11 but gave up dinghy's as I preferred my parents plywood 30 footer. Only been without a boat for 2 years and then used to go out with family friends. Still enjoy boating though missing my boat at present if only to sit on board and add to the 'to do' list. The list always has boating at the top so anything that is likely to scupper that is sorted.

 

[Debenair]

Easter 1956 on Ranworth Broad. “Steer for that pink boathouse.....” It’s still there but may no longer be pink.
Per post 123 I also had fun at the Herts Schools Camp at Barton Turf in 1962, although by that time I was considered an old hand and spent the week skippering various dinghies.

 

[KREW2]

Yes for two specific reasons. Summer of 75 in a Wayfarer run by Channel Islands Sailing School.
It was a baking hot summers day and all six of us we were becalmed. We were in no danger but the tide was pushing us towards the rocks at the back of St. Aubins Fort.
There were two safety boats towing the dinghies back to their moorings, one was a large old Zodiac inflatable, the other was a Dell Quay Dory.
Whilst waiting for a tow the instructor removed the rudder and started to paddle with it. After a few minutes, the Dory being driven by the sailing school owner's much younger girlfriend turned up topless to give us a tow, H&S was not so prevalent so she did't have a life jacket on.

 

[Foolish Muse]

1981 during Christmas vacation in Aruba. (My parents were living in Venezuela and I flew down from University of Ottawa to meet them.) A Sunfish sailboat, rented from the hotel on the beach that we were staying at. I got a 30 minute lesson on how to beat upwind and how to right a capsized boat, then I was off on my own. The sailing was great, but I'll always remember the vacation romance I had with a beautiful Colombian girl; Claudia Duarte. I wonder where she is now?

 

[Toutvabien]

On my uncle Fred's home built Heron at the Civil Service Sailing Association, aged about 8 in around 1966, then on the same boat from Brightlingsea Town Hard a few months later. I never managed to get uncle Fred out on any of my boats but I used to send hime postcards from my travels.

 

[Achillesheel]

1977. Queens Silver Jubilee. I'd just moved to a job in Norwich. Colleague Peter had a Halcyon 23 in Ipswich; on her round Britain tour, HM brought Britannia to Felixstowe Harbour to visit East Anglia. 4 of us took a crafty day off, and in Pete's boat we went down the Orwell to wave at the Queen, and have a few beers. We motored down the Orwell, and as we came into Felixstowe Harbour I was on the helm at that magic moment when Pete got the sails up, and turned the engine off; I was completely hooked from that moment on and have more or less owned boats ever since.

I often wonder if Pete is on the YM forum?

 

[agroundagain]

Aged 6 in the Mirror my Dad built from a kit in the garage. Gravel pit in Cambridgeshire. I remember being properly excited watching as the surveyor certified her, including a buoyancy test, before we set off across the lake, my Dad, my brother and me. Brilliant.

 

[Zagato]

Mirror dinghy aged seven with my father learning also, he got stuck under a low bridge on the road going to Portland.The mast jammed under the bridge due to the rising tide he had not accounted for!

 

[jtwebb]

Mine was in a Cadet dinghy on my own. The school had one never used on the Thames. I got a book out of the lbrary, read it and took the dinghy out to learn. Proved to be a rather expensive experiment over the next 66 years or so.

 

[Quandary]

One I had forgotten.
When I was 18 I emigrated to England to work for the OS as a surveyor, after a year training in Southampton, I was posted to Mansfield to survey mine workings and marshalling yards, I had saved up enough (£45) to buy a motorbike and would go off hill walking at weekends in the Peak district with a workmate on the pillion. he was from London and a member of a canoe club. He got me a place on an expedition down the Wye with the Club, we met them at a Welsh hill railway station and they lent me one of those folding rubber Kleppers? and the trip from the Welsh hills down to the Severn took a week, camping on the banks at night.
As a very low paid civil servant I was entitled to three rail vouchers per year to Liverpool, the designated home town of anyone Irish, so I took my mate to Liverpool and then over to Ireland and we got a wee train out to Killybegs to hike round the coast of Donegal to Derry, he was baffled how well known I seemed because everyone waved or spoke to us and we found hiking difficult because we kept getting offered lifts in all kinds of vehicles. Eventually somewhere around Burtonport (I think?) we came to a broad sea inlet, there was a bell you rang for a ferry, so we rung (or rang) the bell, a man turned up and walked us down to a stone pier where ther was a heavy clinker built open boat, we got in and he rowed out a bit then he hauled up a patched red//brown sail and we took off across the water, the boat creaking and heeling and the water rushing by, it was magic, but did not last too long until we were across and on our way along the coast. to look for somewhere to pitch our tent.
I have no record of the trip but have often wondered where that ferry that we so much enjoyed was?

 

[johnmcc]

Easter 1956 on Ranworth Broad. “Steer for that pink boathouse.....” It’s still there but may no longer be pink.
Per post 123 I also had fun at the Herts Schools Camp at Barton Turf in 1962, although by that time I was considered an old hand and spent the week skippering various dinghies.

Interesting! I was a pupil at Alleyne's, Stevenage. By any chance . . . ?
On the fleet when I was at Barton Turf I remember several Norfolks, several Coypus (rather like GRP bath tubs to look at, but pretty forgiving), a Bosun, a couple of Kestrels, a wooden Wayfarer lent by a friend of the headmaster, and a lovely White Boat called (I think) Amaryllis. Sailed all of them eventually, but the sense of power from helmimg the White Boat with about eight other boys aboard, mostly as ballast, in a fair old blow was intoxicating.

 

[STILL AFLOAT]

I used Kajaks, for years, hunting geese & ducks, in the fiords , in Denmark.
But in 1973 , I did sail around the Baltic, on Rasmus, out of the British Kiel Yacht Club