What next?

The definitive end of the sailing season has been brought home to us by the sudden change to decidedly autumnal weather. During the warm, even hot, sunshine of September we could imagine perhaps one last weekend of cruising, but the gloom, drizzle and chill of October have us lowering our sights towards Sunday afternoons spent poring over the charts and dreaming of next summer, or, more accurately, squabbling over the itinerary. Tea and crumpets and log fires are infinitely more tempting than 2 reefs and a damp sleeping bag.

Skipper’s Box-To-Tick next year is that of two 60-mile passages (required for the Yachtmaster exam) which are to include as much night sailing as possible. Until this summer, the Mate was sceptical about doing this without a third crew member, but now I think it’s perfectly feasible, with a bit of careful planning. There is a balance to be struck, however – I’ve had to dig my heels in to prevent the holiday (holiday, this is the key word that seemed to be missing from the Skipper’s yachting vocabulary) from being totally hijacked to this end. I think we have reached a good compromise now, but of course the best laid plans, etc.

The boat is already booked, from La Trinité sur Mer again. It seemed sensible to do the long passages in an area we’re getting to know quite well. This time, however, the boat is a Dufour 34, which should be a little more sporty than the Bavaria. Make that a lot more sporty. I’m really looking forward to helming it. The best bit about helming is watching Tubs the Skipper do a bit of winching for a change. Short tacking can be such fun. In his short (and not especially illustrious) offshore racing career the Skipper was often the youngest crewmember, and did a great deal of winching, but I’ve allowed him to rest on his tiller, so to speak. I intend to make amends.

Having challenged ourselves with the Dufour: long passages, lights, tides, rocks – does this sound like fun? – we have decided to treat ourselves to another week in the Baltic on a little Folkboat next July. Hopefully it will be just as much fun for us as this year, if somewhat less entertaining for any spectators. We plan to get hold of a copy of the Pilot Book in advance, so I can do some translating at leisure rather than guessing and bluffing with the harbour already in sight, as I did last time. (Well, we didn't hit anything, did we?) We might also splash out the extra 100 euros for one of the smarter Folkboats. Sailing the scruffiest boat in the Baltic once was certainly amusing, but I think once is enough.

Remember this?

The idea of buying a Folkboat one day is starting to solidify as a Plan. The Skipper has gone so far as to find out how much a permanent berth in Brittany would cost, and was very tempted to join the waiting list, currently at least 10 years, depending on the port. On reflection, though, it makes more sense to wait too long and have to pay monthly rates for a year or two, rather than to get to the top of the list before we’re ready, have to refuse the place, and go straight to the back of the queue again. Having reached agreement on that point, we nevertheless have a source of “debate” in the question of deep or self-draining cockpit. That should keep us busy for at least a few of the years between now and the actual purchase of the boat…

Reflections

We have had an excellent summer of sailing – two whole weeks, plus a long weekend crewing, is more than we have ever managed before. We have learnt a huge amount, and although we didn’t face any serious difficulties, we met the challenges that did come our way with reasonable confidence and, most importantly, unfailing (well, in my case at least) good humour.

We have made a big step forward in terms of the Skipper’s Plan: the RYA Yachtmaster qualification. Why bother? Well, partly because he loves certificates (and gets them framed to adorn the walls of his library), but also because he is a cautious bunny by nature, and wants to be sure he knows as much as possible before setting out to do what is, to be truthful, an activity not without its dangers. Perhaps most importantly, he is passionate about sailing, and wants to satisfy himself that he is more than just competent at it. The Yachtmaster certificate is certainly a tough test, and I expect he will be suitably smug when he gets there. Which he will.

In the light of the above, getting skippering experience, and miles in the log, has been the primary objective for the last three years. We did two flotilla holidays from bases in Croatia, which were very useful and hugely enjoyable. The Dalmatian coast is everything the brochures would have you believe, and the country is friendly and relaxed, although you wouldn’t go there for the food… From the Mate’s point of view, a large part of the fun derived from the journeys to and from the Adriatic, adventures in themselves. We were able to stay in places as diverse as Salzburg, Rovinj, Verona (stayed in a winery – most instructive…), Bergamo, Dubrovnik (so beautiful), and Milan (fantastic food).

Sunset at Rovinj, Istria, 2009

The downside of flotilla holidays is being told what to do! General organization, restaurants, booking of marina places, help with berthing: all this is taken care of, which is great, but you have to go where you’re told each day, and if you have one of the smaller boats you will probably have to motor to get there on time. We felt we had milked the flotilla holiday for all it was worth after two weeks, and were eager for our first bareboat charter.

Whilst we have clearly made huge advances in competence since our first flotilla in 2009, the thing which pleases me most personally is something that only dawned on me after we returned from Brittany, which is this: Since the Folkboat week in July, I have completely ceased to feel afraid on a boat. It’s not that I was ever terrified, but I felt many moments of trepidation as we cleared the harbour and prepared to raise sail, even more so if there was a fair bit of wind. Partly this goes back to the dinghies we first learned to sail on. If the boat heels and you don’t do something fast to get it back in balance, then you are going swimming. Knowing there’s a ton of lead at the bottom of the keel, and really believing that the boat cannot capsize (at least not in the kind of conditions in which we would ever set out) are NOT the same thing! Miraculously, my stress has just evaporated. I’m not sure it’s even as rational as confidence born of experience, it’s just that a little switch has flicked in my brain this summer, and I hope it stays that way.

This year, the Mate has also had lots of helming experience, although we never did quite get around to practicing man overboard retrieval, and the more relaxed pace allowed me to look around the boat and think about what was going on. I have also been promoted to Navigator (in the face of zero competition – you just can’t get the staff), and even had the privilege of preparing passage plans and making entries in the log. Gosh.

I also have to confess that I get a lot of pleasure out of the camping side of cruising, at least some aspects of it: cooking in a little galley, with two pans, a knife and a couple of spoons is fun for a week, and eating supper in the cockpit on a sunny evening, moored in a pretty little cove, takes some beating. Paddling a dinghy is certainly a much less tedious way to get to the supermarket than sitting in a queue of traffic (even if keeping the purchases dry can be a challenge). 

The Honeymoon Suite

 Sleeping bags are a pain, though. I don’t like being rolled up like a dead Egyptian. I’m not so crazy about trekking up to the shower block at 7am in the pouring rain, either, and the less said about buckets the better. I’ll stop there.