When taught you to sail?

To be honest I don't know how to sail, I just go out there and do stuff that resembles sailing in the hope that every trip will improve my ability to one day call myself a sailor. I started this adventure in my early sixties ( I don't include my early brush with a chance purchase of a 36' motor sailor that was a complete disaster). These forums have helped me to keep the momentum going , along with a few good friends from here I am progressing slowly, now on my forth boat (first being a monster powerboat that drank petrol like you cannot imagine - or maybe you can :ambivalence: ) second was a 15' mini cruiser that was great, then a 19' , now a 24' old floating caravan that I am struggling with ( centre cockpit wheel steering :rolleyes: ) but hey! I will master this little booger if it kills me trying :encouragement:.
So there is my answer warts and all :D
 
I never went near anything with sails until I was 15 years+, at that age I went to a sea training establishment. One bitter frosty February morning we were marched down to the harbour and there my first 'sailing vessel' awaited...a 54 man clinker built ship's lifeboat (retired :) ) Dipping lug, canvas sails and Hemp running rigging.
We (six sprogs) spent the first hour sliding around on frost covered thwarts trying to get the mast, which felt like a telegraph pole, upright and clamped against the mast thwart. Finally, with the frozen mainsail ready to hoist we pulled the boat clear of the stone jetty. At the tiller sat a bundle of clothing with a red nose sticking out, occasionally muttering oaths and threats,... a retired Chief Petty Officer. He was not happy, he'd been to a crew reunion of one of his many ships the night before and his head hurt..
Later, when it was grudingly suggested I might have at least some idea of how to move a boat using wind power, I graduated to a ships Whaler which flew in contrast to the old lifeboat.
On leave after my first couple of deep sea trips, I saw a little nipper whizzing round the harbour in one of those new little wooden Mirror dinghies which had been invented while I was away at sea. :D
 
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1975, Silver Jubilee year. Moved to Norfolk, intended to buy a small motor boat for the Broads. My colleague Pete was a keen sailor, had a Halcyon 23 on the Orwell. When the Queen did her jubilee tour, she arrived at Felixstowe in Britannia, and spent the day touring East Anglia. Pete suggested a few of us skive off work, sail down to Felixstowe, and wave off HM.

Had a few beers motoring down the Orwell, got to Felixstowe harbour, sails up, engine off. I was on the tiller at that magical moment when it all goes quite and the boat comes alive, and, well, I've been totally hooked ever since.
 
Madhatter said:
To be honest I don't know how to sail, I just go out there and do stuff that resembles sailing in the hope that every trip will improve my ability to one day call myself a sailor. I started this adventure in my early sixties ( I don't include my early brush with a chance purchase of a 36' motor sailor that was a complete disaster). These forums have helped me to keep the momentum going , along with a few good friends from here I am progressing slowly, now on my forth boat (first being a monster powerboat that drank petrol like you cannot imagine - or maybe you can :ambivalence: ) second was a 15' mini cruiser that was great, then a 19' , now a 24' old floating caravan that I am struggling with ( centre cockpit wheel steering :rolleyes: ) but hey! I will master this little booger if it kills me trying :encouragement:.
So there is my answer warts and all :D
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I love this story its brilliant. I can sympathise with the power boat thing. I sold my last sailing boat in the early years of my marriage and got a twin engined petrol thing with 2 huge engines. My wife didn't like sailing then and she still doesn't, which for me, works to my advantage. I have "My" space that is mine alone. Its my escape from mad family life and the rush of life in general.

I really didn't expect this thread to run on and get the replies it has. Yet, its a great insight into the people who remain faceless and nameless in the most part, but will at the drop of a hat offer help, advise quite freely to help other users. It makes for a great community, thanks chaps
 
My first "sailing" experience was in a tin bath along a flooded ditch in Diss Norfolk 1953/4 I still remember the retribution from Mother;) Proper sailing started with the school sailing club, Southchurch Hall High School for boys, after we moved to Southend-on-Sea 1960 ish. Enjoyed it so much I got two paper rounds to pay for an 8' gaff rigged pram dinghy complete with hand pushed trailer made from a pram chassis. I went out with the prawn fishermen a few times but was usually sick, after eating so many warm freshly cooked little beauties.Happy days:encouragement:
 
My then girlfriend and I with some help from my dad built a mirror dinghy in 1970, 6 years prior to getting married. We still have it and it is ready for yet another refurbishment prior to teaching young grandson how to sail. First launch was @ Sunbury on the Thames. First decent sail was off the beach @ Slapton. Self taught, read the Mirror instruction book and pushed off.
Now planning to part time live aboard our Petrel 32 in 2015 for extended cruising. Cannot imagine a life without boats and all the wonderfull people we have got to know through sailing.
 
Interesting to read about how many people had families who were already into sailing. I didn't but knew how to sail as I read all the Swallows and Amazon books by the time I was eleven!
I clearly remember gazing out of my classroom window at blue sails on a washing line and daydreaming!
First time in a sailing boat was off the beach at the Essex County Council camp site at East Mersea when I was fourteen. It was in a Mayfly cold moulded dinghy and scared me half to death as we seemed so close to the water!
Every year they held an International Camp there with kids from all over Europe. They borrowed clinker built boats from the Bradwell centre and there were always kids from abroad who could sail so they took the helm and off we went! There didn't seem so many H & S restrictions back in the sixties and more opportunities to get on the water.
Since then I have had dinghies and cruisers off and on depending on work and family commitments. Hope to do more regular sailing now I am retired but like everyone else I am still learning!
 
By the time I was 14 my parents let my brother, who is 18 months older than me, and I take our old RNSA 14 for a couple of weeks round the Solent. We had two kapok life jackets and a bucket as safety gear and cooked on a primus stove. We hauled up on the beach and slept on the lifejackets with a tarp over the boat. We phoned home in the evenings if we could find a phone box.

We made it to Poole and back!

Proper Swallows and Amazons stuff.
 
Slow_boat said:
By the time I was 14 my parents let my brother, who is 18 months older than me, and I take our old RNSA 14 for a couple of weeks round the Solent. We had two kapok life jackets and a bucket as safety gear and cooked on a primus stove. We hauled up on the beach and slept on the lifejackets with a tarp over the boat. We phoned home in the evenings if we could find a phone box.

We made it to Poole and back!

Proper Swallows and Amazons stuff.
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Fantastic! I always had a dream of dinghy camping - never did it and definitely too old for it now...
 
Bought a 20ft keelboat in the 60's when I was 20. Camped under canvas and rowed out to it every day for a week practicing getting the sails up and down. Sailed around the mooring attached to it with along rope! In week two I let the rope go. Still sailing.
 
Only ever 'sailed' on car ferries up to the age of 53 then bought a 6 ton Hillyard and got to know how to sail her :encouragement:. Then got to know about wooden boat maintenance :sorrow:
 
I was about 9 or 10 I guess, so something like 1975 or so.... We were living outside of Victoria BC, and I guess my mother decided to send me off to some dodgy day camp during the summer to relieve herself of the tedium of looking after us kids...
It was located adjacent to the Royal roads naval academy overlooking Esquimalt lagoon just around the corner from the navy's west coast base... We used to watch the restigouche class frigates and the New tribals coming and going...

Anyways I digress.

I hated the place... They used to make us swim in some manky pond... make tie died tea shirts and dip string in wax to make candles...paddle canoes... All sorts of hippy ****.

But one day someone dug out a dodgy old mirror Esq dingy from someplace, And we all were heaved into our big rd lifejackets and given a go.

Most hated it, and were hopeless. None of the supervisors seemed to have a clue.... Bizarelly I was able to immeadiatly make the thing work, and within a couple of days I was sailing it onto and off the pontoon... And doing trips around the lagoon.

From then on for the next couple of summers that's all I pretty much did... They new I hated the manky pond, so I did the canoeing stuff... Which I loved, and then sailed the dingy. No one else seemed bothered.

A few years later we moved to Red Deer, a godforsaken town 700 miles from the nearest ocean. My mum met some guy through her involvment in the Education board who had a couple of hobie cats on a local lake... I then was given the keys for the next few years to what I later learnt was the first hobie imported into canada, a 14.

I understand that my mum was also getting something else from Blokey... I think that was what put the nail in the coffin of the marriage...

When I came over here I didn't go near a boat until 98.. We then got a couple of stink pots... I thought it would be a easier route for swmbo... She then went off and did a weekend sailing on a mixed charter, we sold the stink pots, spent a few years chartering... And then 8 years ago bought our current boat. Did the DS and CS and written things... But the sailing has always been instinct...

Just wish we could get out more...
 
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Learnt to sail in Fireflies in Dover Harbour in the late 60's - for the life of me I can't remember being "taught" more like get in and see what happens! Good times though and the experiences, well one or two, still come to me...............must get out more I guess......remember being soaking wet every week after man-handling the things up and down the gravel/stone beach. Lost several pairs of glasses too, which mum and dad weren't to happy about......a pimpled youth as I was.....
 
Snap. River Dee in Chester in a GP14. Good for learning light airs sailing. I think I would have been 9-10 years old.
 
Searush said:
Do you mean at Farndon Road in Chester? Not much room for sailing there!
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No, not much room, which is why it's a good place to learn the basics. You have to keep tacking the boat before you hit the bank! My godfather used to belong to the Shell Sailing Club, which kept their boats up by the Red House pub. Club is long gone now.
 
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