Why do we go sailing? (long)

[Fergus]

Here's how it goes for me..

Dream about sailing at the weekend, spend ridiculous amounts of time on YBW.com
Saturday finally arrives. Get up at 0530, haul dinghy into car boot, sand and water everywhere, get outboard, mounting bracket, oars and pump from garden shed, get in car. Have I forgotten anything? Boat keys might help! Get to Poole 2 hours later, drag all the stuff down to the beach, pump up dinghy - oh cr*p small leak in pump so not full pressure, well we'll manage anyway. Put on oilies as a bit of a chop in the harbour, 25deg already so sweating like a pig. Start engine and set off. Engine stops half way - what the hell? Oh, painter round the prop. Hard to get engine off mounting bracket due to tension on the painter. Get it freed eventually and start again. Previous levels of perspiration now seem minor in comparison. Get to boat. Covered in weed at waterline even though only 2 weeks sonce last use. 45 mins scrubbing hard, using brush in dinghy rowlock while hanging on for dear life to the boat in strong ebb tide. Finally get on board. Why is boat not pointing in the same direction as the others? Simple answer, aground on the mooring! Memo to self. send irate letter to mooring owners who assured me that I would be OK with 5'8" draught. Open sea cocks, pump bilge, Will the battery be flat? First piece of good news - engine starts fine. Finally set off at 10 once tide has turned, switch on instruments, depth warning permanently sounding, inch out into channel and we're away! 1 hour later finally out into open sea, F4 NE, perfect. 3 hours sailing, decide to make tea, go below to find that milk carton has sprung a leak all over the inside of the cool box, never mind clear it up later, have a beer instead. Have a fantastic sail, eventually head back, watch jetskis doing huge jumps off the wake of "blofeld" (the condor ferries cat) as it comes out of the harbour, get back on mooring. Oh sh1t, the main hallyard is wrapped around the wrong side of the radar reflector. Try tossing plastic cup attached to line over cross trees to then attach to hallyard and free up. cup breaks when falls onto deck. Nothing for it, SWMBO must go up in bosun's chair - no the boat won't capsize darling - how do you know, we've never done this - trust me - oh yeah! Get hallyard free, SWMBO says lovely view from up there. Inch in to mooring, depth alarms as before. Reverse process re. dinghy etc minus rope round prop and scrubbing detail. Manage to go aground on the outborad while coming in (50m from shore!) and nearly lose shear pin. Deflate dinghy and lug back to car, collapse in overheated car, sit in traffic jam for 3 hours. Go back to work and logon to YBW.com. Process starts all over again..

Sound familiar? (should I start a blog like Neil?)

 

[CodStewart]

Sell the house and car and just keep on sailing.

 

[Evadne]

Try going down to the boat the night before, you will find you enjoy your own mooring a lot more, and its the one that you spend the most money on through the course of the year:
Getting out to boat is less of a rush so accidents are fewer. On board, heat up a (pre-prepared?) meal for dinner, crack open a bottle of wine and enjoy the sounds of the waders as the light slowly fades. Or listen to the gentle patter of rain on the cabin roof. /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif
Wake up at the crack of dawn, 'cos you always do on the boat. Bacon butties for breakfast, a leisurely preparation of sails and so on then off on the tide.
The sailing is always the best bit, but this way you get to spend an extra 12 hours on your boat.

 

[Fergus]

Thanks for the suggestion - Friday evenings are appalling traffic-wise - hence the early Sat start. We tried Friday a couple of times and ended up arriving after dark (!)

 

[PeteCooper]

It's so much easier on the Clyde. For example last night. Arrive home from work. Eat. Five minutes drive to marina. Walk to boat, another five minutes. Two hours sailing. Five minutes to drive home.

 

[ShipsWoofy]

Ah yes, but we decided to keep the boat away to encourage us to use it more. If she was five minutes away we would never stay on board and more likely over sleep at weekends missing great sailing days.

Just a thought.

 

[Robin]

I'm with you Dave, Fridays are POETS days. Thankfully we moved here to Poole 18 years back and now live under 10 minutes from the boat but we drove 2hrs each way for 16 years and ALWAYS on Friday evenings, usually arriving and going out across Poole in the dark. We never missed a weekend either because the decision was made, no will it won't it be blowy/rainy/foggy/cold at the last minute and I can only once remember sleeping in the clubhouse because we couldn't get out until the Sat am. We came fully prepared with everything in big waterproof bags for a wet dinghy ride and used a beat up old 10ft dinghy that was better than the Avon donut for a dryer ride out because our mooring was exposed to SW winds across the full width of Poole. Most Friday nights we would move off the mooring too, dark or not, to find a quieter spot out of the wind and away from Truckline (now Brittany Ferries) wash because in those days it passed 20 yds from our mooring.

Nowadays we live locally and have a club marina berth. But we still go on board on Fridays (as soon after lunch as I can justify sneaking off, phone diverted to mobile...). Nearly every Friday we are gone from our berth by early evening and not back until Sunday, if the weather is seriously crap we will probably still be on board on Friday and may stay on the berth. 200 yards from us are houses that cost £millions just for the view, we have it on our berth! We do have a full cockpit canopy we can put up, complete with picture window at the stern so we can even eat dinner in the cockpit in a full and rainy gale despite being stern into the prevailing wind.

Missing Friday nights on board would effectively halve the fun!

Robin

 

[Lakesailor]

Yeah Pete. I'm in a similar (landlocked) situation. 10 minutes from the front door to leaving the mooring. No cars involved.
But poor old Fergus isn't in that position. That's his beef. Realistically he can't do a lot about it unless he can wangle flexi-time or some Friday afternoons off, and we don't know about his wife's situation.

We just have to be thankful it's not so bad for us.

 

[dralex]

Is there a local club where you could keep the dinghy and OB? this gets rid of some of the hassle and also prevents the car stinking of petrol on the occassions you forget to shut off the fuel valve. As Robin said, another option is to get a drier rigid tender to get to the mooring. The traffic does improve on Friday evenings- how about eating at home and then driving down later. No matter what time you get to the boat, it great to have a beer or glass of wine, then sleep knowing you'll have a full day of it.

I'm one of the lucky ones in having a portable and flexible job so we could move to the area we wanted to sail. I realise that not everyone can do this.

Anyway, surely your description describes exactly why we sail- we love the challenge of even getting to the boat, and it does feel quite good drying out after a wet dinghy ride.

 

[Cornishman]

30 years ago I turned down the opportunity of a well paid job in Birmingham to avoid all the hassle you have listed here, and I have never regretted it. If you are a wage slave (I quote Bill Morris on Radio 4 this morning) then you must put up with the unpleasantries that go with it. I am as poor as the proverbial church mouse, but much better off for it.

 

[ghost]

yo Fergus,
maybe the grounding was a reult of the extra southerly moon, the pressure, and as you say ne winds blowing the stuff out around the corner to anvil etc. ?

 

[Fergus]

I'm trying to get into Lakeyard next season - they provide a free water taxi service and we'll be able to keep dinghy etc down there. Worth the £400 extra don't you think?! (Plus far less grumbling from SWMBO!)

 

[dralex]

It's difficult not to be a wage slave in today's society, and there few jobs which are transportable. Unless a person lives on benefits, has savings or a large inheritance, they still have to work somewhere, somehow to earn money just to live. How much you choose to earn depends on the lifestyle you aspire to. Once you get the commitments of consumer life, it's unfortunately difficult to get out and a lot easier said than done. SAying that, we chose to work part time, have a family, under mortgage ourselves, get cheaper cars and then get a boat. It's where you set the level of compromise and what is important to you. It's a different set of compromises for everyone.

 

[PeteCooper]

Despite my earlier comment I do sympathise entirely. In the 60s, my brother and I both had to attend school on a Saturday morning. Mum and Dad kept our boat on the River Ancholm, so we sailed on the Humber. This was a two hour drive from our home, and the sailing there was unreliable because of the tides. When the school discovered that it was illegal to give us Tuesday and Thursday afternoons off but work Saturday morning they changed to conventional hours and in 1969 we moved our boat to Dunbar on the East coast of Scotland. We had many years pleasant sailing there, travelling up every Friday night, typically a five hour drive, and then back on Sunday evening. We would have preferred to be on the West coast but the road links then weren't what they are today. When I grew older and left home I kept a boat on the Ancholm for a couple of years and then moved it to Shepherd's on Windermere for a while. Eventually I got chance to move up here for work, and have never looked back.

 

[Evadne]

Ah well, at least the sailing makes up for it, I hope. We're lucky in being able to get to the pub nearest to the mooring by 7 or 8 pm, and only having a (longish) creek to trundle down. I can even row if I want or need to. Not sure I'd do the same on an exposed moooring in Poole harbour.