Walking on the deck of the Gosport marina brought back memories of my childhood days when dad had a boat in the Royal Selangor Yacht Club. Back then, the RSYC had wooden ramps with the sea water of Klang lapping against it. My mother, sister and I would wait for dad to dock from his fishing expedition with his 'konchos, normally when the tide comes in with the evening sun. My sister and I would while our time away trying to find the biggest, fattest mudskipper under the muddy piers and the biggest treat was when mom would order us pancake ice creams with banana in it sometimes. Such was life. We spent a lot of weekends in the yacht club when finally dad got his hands on a golf club and sold off the old Barramundi boat.
D was kind enough to invite some of us to go sailing on a chartered boat for his family over the weekend. We'd start off from Gosport early Saturday and sail to the Isle of Wight to East Cowes and dock there for the night. We had an evening dinner of fish and chips and a little lager on a lighthouse ship moored in Gosport. Then it was a night in the Bavaria 38 which had 8 bunks, a kitchen, toilet etc.
The winds were favourable on Saturday morning and before we knew it, we were shutting off the motors and setting up sail. Skipper set us all on different tasks e.g. manning the helm, unfurling the sails, winching the sheets, etc. First of all we had to learn a new language as everything had proper names - ropes, not sheets, port not left, starboard not right etc.
Quotes from “Overheard Sailing” (http://www.overheardsailing.com) :
Dock person : Ok, Take this line and secure it to your aft cleat.
Dock person : No! At the STERN of the boat!
Dock person : NO! NO! That CLEAT there. There, on the back of the boat!
Dock person : THE F--KING SILVER THING!!!
Post-crash course on sea-talk, next we'd have to learn the whims of the tide and the winds. The yacht sailed along like a breeze with each of us taking turns to steer and that was the tricky. Skipper D had already charted the course by mapping the tide and wind direction at different times but out at sea, it wasn't as easy as steering the helm towards the Isle of Wight and the boat would move in the same direction. Instead the yacht moves in a zig-zag direction or 'beating to windward' with the undercurrent moving as well. And to be able to 'catch the wind', we had to judge the 'arrow' direction against the weather vane - 'V'. A seemingly tricky business but eventually like riding a bicycle, one gets the feel of it after a while.
We did finally arrive in the Isle of Wight with zero man overboard. The trip was a great way of demonstrating team effort and listening to instructions. Highly recommended and one to remember for a lifetime
