“Do you fancy a sail?”

We’ve done a fair amount of sailing but one thing that we have not done much of is slow speed maneuvering around fixed objects. This includes parking Flight in a  marina and pulling her up alongside a dock. Knowing that this was a deficiency of ours, we enlisted some professional help from Commodore Yachting in Gosport and Tom Price hooked us up with an amazing instructor. We worked with Alistair Johnson, a Royal Yachting Association (RYA) Yachtmaster Instructor, for two full days on nothing but docking the boat. Roman and I took turns bringing Flight in to docks and marina slips which are called finger births here in the UK. We even learned how to back Flight into a finger berth which makes for a very easy forward departure.

Not only was Alistair a fantastic instructor, he’s also extremely personable and has an incredible amount of sailing experience. He’s been through the Drake Passage seven times and rounded the Horn once, in addition to multiple ocean crossings. We peppered in Alistair with questions all day long and he answered each one thoughtfully and with clear explanations

At the end of the second day of training, we invited Alistair to join us on Flight for a belated Cinco de Mayo celebration of chicken fajitas and all of the fixings. He brought a lovely selection of single malt scotch for an after dinner tasting. During the course of conversation, Alistair mentioned he wasn’t working the following day and said to us, “Do you fancy a sail tomorrow?” It took us less than a second to answer with an emphatic YES!

Flight came with a lot of “kit” (equipment) the we were familiar with in in concept but had never used in practice. On our day sail with Alastair, we rigged the cutter stay and stay sail, which is a second sail on the bow (front) of Flight which enables her to sail upwind at a tighter angle.  We were sailing  close to the wind at 8 knots which was exhilarating!

At the end of the day, Alastair asked if there was any chance we would be amenable to his brother and a friend joining us for a day sail. Of course we answered YES! Alastair, brother Tom and Karen, all RYA instructors, joined us and we rigged up the stay sail with running backstays and the Code 0, a light wind sail similar to an asymmetrical spinnaker. Neither Tom nor Karen had rigged these types of sails either, so it was a learning experience for all of us.

It was another great day of sailing! To top it off, Roman and I invited everyone for dinner on Flight. I made a couple of chicken currys and everyone contributed ingredients and elbow grease. It was a lovely cap to a very fun day filled with sailing, good humor and new friends!