The Final(?) Plan

So here's what I intend to do.

One of my goals for this year is taking care of my weight. Apparently the optimum weight for a top Laser sailor is 84kg and they are usually a bit taller than me. I want to get down to 85kg which is at the top end of the weight range for my my height (1.78m) but I am pretty broad shouldered. I'm already down to 94kg but its been hard. When you've been a fat bastard pretty much all of your life and really enjoy your food, the grams don't come off easily. Thankfully, I've found a really good online diet site at WeightLossResources.com.

I used to think that only a moron counted every calorie but now I realise that my internal systems for saying 'enough' are pretty much non-existent. The beauty of WeightLossResources is that it actually works out your fuel needs by adding in your daily activity level together with the exercise you've taken, then gives you a daily calorie 'budget' based on what your goal is for losing weight. Mine is 0.5kg a week. You then enter your food intake using the huge database. You can even enter your own recipes. Most importantly, it gives you a breakdown of the food groups you are consuming, together with an ideal food group profile. I like to eat a slightly larger percentage of carbohydrates as all my reading suggests that slightly higher carbs are necessary if you're doing a lot of exercise.

My second goal for this year is to improve my strength and fitness. I do a lot of cycling anyway and the last of dad's money has gone on a decent rowing machine and a small set of weights. The main problem here, as ever, is time. I have a limited amount of time to spend in the week to exercise and the weekend I try to spend as much time on the water as I can. My solution has been to get up at 5.00 am and exercise before I leave for work at 7.30. The principal stumbling block with this is metabolism. I just can't get myself going this time in the morning so the main reason for getting up that early is to ease into it gently. I have breakfast straightaway then sit and have a hot drink for 45 minutes to an hour. I'm trying to alternate weights with rowing machine. Originally I only had one rest day in the week but I kept getting injured, so now I have two.



My weight training programme is limited by what I can do with my little set of dumbells (total weight 35kg) and the hour or so available, so I'm starting up with one or two exercises for each main muscle group. I'm still experimenting with the exercises. On the rowing machine I do a 40 minute interval training session (I prefer the marvelous Finnish word 'Fartlek') based on percentage of maximum heart rate. I finish the session, rowing or weight training, with stretches. I also do a Pilates class and a body conditioning workout once a week. Oh, and February to October I cycle two or three times a week as well.


As far as on the water training goes, I've signed up for some of the excellent UKLA regional training courses. I went on a couple last year and learnt a lot, almost too much. That's the problem with my age, I take longer to process information, so I'm going back for refreshers! If you're in the UK and you're serious about improving your Laser sailing, go to www.laser.org.uk and look up the events section. You'll have to join UKLA to participate but its well worth the money - you get a decent discount off boat insurance too.

Also on this site is a comprehensive list of Laser racing events. I was staggered at the amount of Laser racing that goes on. Each of the regions runs a Grand Prix with about a dozen meetings which are a good notch up from club racing. I've done a couple of Thames Valley GP events this year and I'm aiming to do enough in the Autumn to qualify for an overall score.

Over the next 4 years I'm going to gradually build up the level of events I compete in, aiming to do national and European events before 2012. Not the least of my problems is going to be finding enough time to sail in the sea as its a pretty foregone conclusion that that's the kind of venue the 2012 worlds will be held on. I live about 60 odd miles from the nearest ocean which isn't a lot compared to what other people in the world have to contend with, I know, but the logistics at the moment are a bit daunting for me.

So that's the outline plan. You'll be able to read here how I get on with it. The highs, the lows, the successes, the failures. Wish me luck!

The Plan (Part 4)

I can't emphasise too much how disappointed I was at the cancellation of the Arctic trip. I hadn't fallen out of love with sailing and I was engaging in club racing with relish, but for some reason the bigger boats seemed to have less pull on me. I spent a month of disappointment, then a further month sulking. Then fate intervened.

In the boat park at the lake where I race there was a boat, a Laser, which was something of a legend. The cover was decrepit and green with mould but the boat underneath was clearly in very good condition. It hadn't been moved from its space in an age. The sticker denoting that boat parking fees had been paid was always up to date, but no-one at the club had ever seen it on the water. No-one knew who owned it except for the manager, and he was keeping schtum. Half a dozen people had made enquiries about it, but there was never a reply. One sunny day in July I was walking through the boat park when I saw the boat had its cover off.

It was a typical Laser with the purple colour scheme from the 90s, but I saw immediately that although in a grubby state there was hardly a knock on it anywhere. As I gave it a further once over, a man struggled up with a bucket of water and a scrubbing brush. I asked him if he was planning on getting it back on the water. "I was thinking of selling it actually. How much do you think it would fetch". The guy had bought if for himself as a 40th birthday present, sailed it for a season then lost interest. He'd always meant to take it up again but, you know. That was almost 15 years ago. I gave him, I swear, what I thought was an honest estimate (£1200) and his eyes lit up. I wished him good luck and turned towards the club boats, but as I walked away it seemed every step was getting harder and harder, like I was attached to that boat by a length of bungee.

I walked back to the guy now busily scrubbing away at the boat. "Hey" I said, "If you're happy with £1200 I'll give you a cheque for it now". The guy thought about it for all of 2 seconds, then held his hand out. "Done". We shook hands on it. "Do you want me to carry on cleaning it?" I really didn't want him to have the opportunity to think about it any longer than necessary, because where he'd scrubbed the boat it looked almost new, and I was starting to think that maybe £1200 was a little under priced. "Nah" I said "Just stick the cover back on it".

So the deal was done to everyone's satisfaction. Maybe he got a price a couple of hundred under what it was worth, maybe not, but I'm certain he walked out of that boat park a much happier man than when he walked in. Mrs SteerRollDash was a bit put out that I'd joined the boat owning fraternity without consulting her, but was more than relieved when I explained it was a dinghy rather than the cruiser she had been expecting me to buy for over a year.

The following week a trip up to the Laser Centre at Long Buckby saw me laden with go faster goodies and a weekend's work saw my new prize scrubbed til the gelcoat shone and kitted out with a complete XD overhaul. She looked the dog's bollocks. My race results started picking up immediately. Although the club boats were safe and serviceable they weren't competitive for whatever reason. I immediately noticed that my new ride floated perceptibly higher on the water than them, even though they were dry. Then after a couple of months I won a Bank Holiday race on the water and came second in the Autumn Laser regatta. The fact that a lot of the good sailors at the club weren't there didn't matter to me as I beat a lot of people I would normally have expected to be behind.

Gradually I forgot about the disappointment of the previous few months. My naturally competitive personality kicked into hyper drive and I really got into sailing the boat faster. However, it was obvious that although I had the enthusiasm of a 20 year old, my 50 year old body was lagging way behind. I was way overweight for a Laser at 104kg and still carrying injuries from rugby and a one off parachute jump for charity that went a bit wrong (I'll tell that tale another day). I started trying to lose weight, get fitter, spend as much time on the water as I could and read everything I could find about sailing, but trying to fit all this in with a busy work load was demanding to say the least.

I needed to be more methodical about what I was training for. I needed a goal. And then it was announced that, against the odds, London would host the 2012 Olympics. Over the following few days as the details were announced and I thought about how all our Olympic sailing hopefuls would feel about competing on their own water, I wished that I was young enough and talented enough to be part of it. Then I thought "You need a goal. Why not have your own Olympics in 2012?"

I immediately fizzed with the idea. I could never compete at Olympic level, but I could compete in an Olympic class, the standard Laser, and, such is the breadth of Laser competition, there are loads of opportunities to compete internationally and in some cases against those who have reached Olympic or near Olympic standards. Why not aim high!

My goals are now clear and the final Plan is taking shape. I will aim to compete in the Laser Masters Worlds in 2012, wherever they are held. A big ask. And, I will aim to finish up in the top half of the fleet. A massive ask.

Wish me luck.

The Plan (Part 3)

It was during dinner the first evening on Sark that The Skipper told us of his intention to return to the Arctic circle the next summer. He had talked a company into making it a commercial venture and his tales of whales and seals and Innuit had me hooked. The venture would last for seven weeks. The trip would take place over the limited Arctic summer in late July and August, to enable us to penetrate Scoresbysund in Greenland up to the Innuit village of Ittoqortoormit.

Being a teacher, I get late July and August off. My dad had recently given me some money - not a fortune, but enough to more than cover the trip. Mrs SteerRollDash wouldn't contemplate going herself but saw how eager I was to go. At the Southampton Boat Show I negotiated a 20% discount for booking all seven weeks of the trip with the the company and from that moment my life revolved around what would be happening the following summer.

After paying the initial deposit, I still had enough money to go on 'mile-building' weekends with the company organising the trip. I spent several weekends trolling around the Solent and across the channel, diving down to Porsmouth straight after work on a Friday and returning to London late on a Sunday. I really loved the life on board and began planning my next weekend almost as soon as I left the previous one.

However, by March the following year I still hadn't had any more details about the trip. A phone call to the company reassured me that, yes, it was still going ahead, there were just some details to finalise. By Whitsun I still hadn't heard anymore and was now decidedly nervous. We had gone away for a week down to Lyme Regis with my dad and I was standing in the graveyard of the church on Gun Cliff when I got a phone call from the company. Two of the people who had provisionally booked had pulled out citing inability to get the time off. It was no longer viable so they had reluctantly made the decision to call it off. Sorry. I have never been so disappointed about anything in my life. This was going to be my future. My great adventure, my gap year squeezed into seven weeks, my Yachtmaster miles that would open the door to other things for me. And there it was, in the words of the old comedian, gone. The last nine months of dreaming and scheming and planning were buried in the graveyard at Lyme Regis.

I didn't lose interest in sailing the bigger boats but the disappointment was such that for a while that I couldn't face getting on one. I knew that I would be saying to myself 'what if' all the time I was aboard. I carried on dinghy sailing at the club and then events conspired to fundamentally change The Plan.

The Plan (Part 2)

At first sight I wasn’t too enamoured of The Boat, a Jeanneau Melody. The hull was a bit grubby, the teak decking had seen better days, and the rigging looked a bit tired. I caught site of a man sitting in the cockpit, who had the look of someone who felt his eyes were a bit too large for his head.
“Are you The Skipper?” I asked
“I’m one of them”
“I’m The Skipper you’re looking for” said a voice from down below and out into the sunshine stepped a tall, ramrod straight man in his fifties with the bluest eyes I have ever seen. The Skipper was an ex-Coldstream Guardsmen with more sailing mileage in his log than all the cars I’ve ever owned had miles on the clock. We exchanged pleasantries while The Skipper no. 2 (who turned out to be the delivery crew – The Boat’s home port is Southampton), held his head and moaned ever so gently. The Skipper grinned hugely
“We got in yesterday evening and went out for a couple of beers”
The Skipper no. 2 looked up, almost with contempt
“Whatever you do, don’t ever go out with this man for ‘a couple of beers’.
At about this time The Shipmates hauled up to the boat and we began another round of pleasantry exchanging,.

Time and tide wait for no man or Comp Crew/Day Skipper candidate and so The Skipper no. 2 reluctantly made his way for the ferry back to Portsmouth, and we got our gear stowed.

Down below, The Boat still failed to impress. Everything looked well used but at least it was clean and tidy, and the plaques on the bulkhead commemorating participation in three Fastnet races in the early 90s were reassuring. Mrs SteerRollDash and I were allocated the forward cabin and went to make our selves familiar with what was to be our home for the next week.

After stowing our gear The Skipper got us to talk about our sailing experience and goals. To my surprise he didn’t pooh-pooh my stated intention of one day sailing single handed across the Atlantic, but instead seemed enthusiastic about it. It was my first experience of his ‘go for it’ attitude, which I later would find tempered by a cast iron commitment to getting the basics right and an uncompromising attitude to the practise of good seamanship.

I used to use the term ‘steep learning curve’ freely once upon a time, but after those first few days entering and leaving ports and trying to put the theory I’d learnt on a flat, spacious, not pitching or rolling table at night school into practice together with learning about how to handle a boat, I’m now a bit more circumspect about the phrase. I also learned that although The Boat might not be pristine she was dry and functional.

Although there wasn’t much of a sea, Mrs SteerRollDash, after an encouraging start, began to feel queasy especially down below and by the end of the first day felt decidedly sea sick. Our first night in Alderney didn’t help as there was a slight swell in Braye harbour which meant there was no respite for Mrs SteerRollDash even when we stopped. A brief run ashore did pick her up a bit and she managed to pass the night comfortably.
Mrs SteerRollDash started to feel better over the next few days but never escaped the queasiness while underway.

I didn’t really know what to expect from The Channel Islands. My mental picture was constructed with the help of World War 2 television dramas and some anecdotes from people I know who had been there. I wasn’t prepared for the parade of absolute delight that unfolded over that week.

After an overnight stay in Alderney we made our way on to St Peter Port. Confronted by the huge number of boats waiting to get into Victoria Marina, I was sure that we would end up tied up outside, but (in no time at all it seemed) the Harbour Master Staff had us all rafted up safely inside safely and good humouredly. Even four deep on both sides of the visitors pontoons, there was no problems with power or water supplies.

It was here I had my first experience of the warm camaraderie of sailors. Fore and aft and next to us we had Dutch, Germans, Belgians and other Brits. Within a few minutes of rafting up details about homeports were exchanged together with snippets of information about the weather. One Dutch Beneteau owner found out from a British Beneteau owner where he could get a replacement part for his rigging in Poole, the Dutchman’s next port of call.

After freshening up, The Skipper went exploring in St Peter Port and we set foot on shores once again dominated by the motor car, but soon found a decent pub to hide from them, The Albion, which is also the closest to the marina had a great range of real ales and we settled down to a pleasant evening. When The Skipper strolled in and joined us a little later and we chatted about our experiences of the previous few days, I noticed a subtle change taking place. Any veteran of residential courses knows that feeling when the barriers have been broken down and the delegates begin to gel. This was different however. The very real stresses and strains of navigating a boat through (for us) some challenging circumstances had started to turn us into something else – we were becoming a crew.

Just when I thought I was getting the hang of the Channel Islands, our next stop completely exceeded my expectations. The spectacular majesty of Havre Gosselin at Sark begins to look imposing from even a mile out, but picking up a mooring with the sound echoing from the rocks around is just awesome. As we moored I noticed several inflatables dangling 30 feet above the water by their mooring ropes and enquired why they were tied up like that.
“When the owners got out of them” said The Skipper “They were still floating”. I began to realise just what ‘some of the biggest tidal ranges in the world’ actually meant.

We spent a glorious day at Sark, which culminated in an arduous, but worthwhile slog up the cliff path to see The Boat and the other moored boats on a sparkling sea framed by the hard, high brown rocks of the cliffs. Sark itself was so quiet – even quieter than Alderney, which I would not have believed possible two days earlier. We settled down for a drink in one of the two pubs when, with amazing speed (by my city boy standards), the fog rolled in. The journey back to The Boat was, well, downright scary (mental note – one small torch is not enough to get two people down a steep path in the dark and fog). However, the pull back to The Boat in the inflatable made it all worthwhile. Each pull of the oar made the water surface explode into blue and white sparks – my first encounter with phosphorescence. Back on board I spent several minutes with the boathook tracing fiery patterns in the water, like the bonfire night sparklers when I was a boy. That night the sea was only very slight, and I was rocked slowly and gently to sleep. It was surely one of the best ends to one of the best days of my life.

The next stop was St. Helier in Jersey. I didn’t like St. Helier at all. The entry to the harbour and the rafting process was not nearly as well managed as St. Peter Port, with a very officious man barking orders at yachts as they came up to the visitor’s berth. His approach to dealing with questions thrown up by the various language barriers was typically British – he just shouted the last instruction even louder. The bad temperedness rubbed off on some of the visitors, and for the first time we saw disputes and arguments on the pontoons, mostly over the inadequate onshore power facilities.

The town of St Helier itself was too much like the towns I am used to. There were cars racing around with little regard for pedestrians, little groups of teenagers congregating in any place that offered an unspoilt view of other little groups of teenagers. I wasn’t sorry that we planned to be out the next morning.

As we made our way toward the harbour entrance, the wind picked up even more. The Skipper grinned.
“The harbour master’s going to love me for this. Turn the engine off, we’re going to sail out”
We got plenty of tacking practice over the next 25 minutes as we beat up to the harbour entrance, sometimes missing the walls by a matter of a few feet. As our last tack took us cleanly out of the harbour entrance there were one or two approving nods from some of the spectators who had been watching us. I put on my salty sea dog face.

I had been given the job of passage planning for the whole day and thankfully managed to find my way along the south of Jersey, turning northwards through Les Arquettes without incident. Our next port was Cartaret but we couldn’t get across the sill before 10 pm, so we had decided to stop at Les Ecrehou for dinner. As we approached to what amounts to a collection of rocks with the odd house built on, the clouds that had dogged us during the day lifted and this delightful place was shown to its best advantage, with golden, sandy beaches as smooth as a supermodel’s bum, almost Caribbean in appearance. However, we had arrived at just on low tide and, one by one, the jagged rocks disappeared with the flood, leaving just a few to penetrate the surface. We realised just why it is that this place is recommended as being treated with caution.

As we set off for Cartaret, within an hour the wind had dropped again. As we reluctantly turned the engine on, the last of the sun dropped below the horizon and almost simultaneously fog dropped on top of The Boat. My passage plan was now largely redundant but with use of the depth sounder, radar and GPS we hit Cartaret on the nose. By the time we had found a place in the marina and tidied the boat it was gone 11 and we were all gasping for a drink.

The yacht club at Barneville-Cartaret is a modern construction, with a large bar built on top of the usual amenities. As The Skipper sprinted up the steps, Bernadette, the proprietor was about to shut the door.
“I’m sorry, we are closing!”

“But we’re dying for a drink!” said The Skipper. Bernadette looked us over.
“Well, I’m not a doctor, so you’d better come in for a pint” Bernadette had lived in the UK and her English was faultless. She kept the bar open for us for another two hours and laughed and chatted with us. There was a decidedly different feel to our conversation now. The experience in the fog, although not seriously dangerous was anxious enough to change our perceptions of life afloat, and working together to ensure each other’s safety had worked a subtle change. Mike especially had come out of himself a bit and was animated and articulated about the day’s passage. Now we definitely were a crew and conversation about home and mortgages, work and children had changed to boats and harbours, weather and wind and the next port of call.

As the tide to get out of the marina wouldn’t be right until late in the evening, we spent the whole of the next day in Cartaret. Our first port of call was the café on the old quayside. We ordered drinks and The Skipper joined us for a coffee. The Skipper told us about how he got into sailing and shared some anecdotes from his huge experience, some of which had us laughing until our jaws ached.

The weather was fine and we explored this small town looking for provisions and other supplies, which was difficult for me, as I had twisted my knee and although it was easy enough moving around the boat, any distance walking was decidedly painful. However, I felt I owed it to Mrs SteerRollDash to go ashore for a bit.

For the most part the French were very welcoming, but the attitude of some of the shopkeepers was a bit disappointing. We seemed to be almost an intrusion on their social lives. The French custom of closing for 2 hours for lunch seems odd to us, used to the 24-hour city life. However, as we got more experience of the French attitude to food and eating (the market at Cherbourg on Saturday was a food lover’s delight) we became huge converts.

That evening saw us out of Cartaret night sailing for Dielette. The wind had just about got up enough for us to motor sail and for a brief period was strong enough to enable us to turn that damned engine off. The sound of just the wind and the water and the constant look out for lights to navigate by was yet another new experience. Dielette, however, was disappointing to say the least. We arrived at dark into a gloomy concrete basin surrounded by hills. Light didn’t improve the prospect any. The hills had very few relieving features and the concrete looked even more grey and uninviting. The marina complex was being re-developed and, although they had made efforts to make it look pretty, the facilities were poor. There was a steady stream of disaffected people coming out of the shower block, grumbling, soon to be followed by me and Mrs SteerRollDash. The coin machine controlling the shower only accepted the sum of €2.37 a really stupid amount as the machine didn’t give change and therefore required at least 5 different coins to operate it. The showers themselves were smelly and there was litter on the floor.

We weren’t sorry to leave Diellette, even though the next port of call was the return to Cherbourg.

For almost the first time that week the wind blew a steady F4 and we hitched a ride on the Alderney Race around to Cherbourg, an exhilarating sail which left me desperate for more. Thankfully the Stugeron was doing its stuff and even Mrs SteerRollDash enjoyed the fine days sailing. We found a berth in the marina quickly and made plans to go out that evening for our last meal together.

Its incredible to me, used to takeaways, pizza and chip shops that even the yacht club at Cherbourg took food seriously. There wasn’t any compromise on quality as far as I could see and the meal I had was comparable to the best dinner’s I’d eaten locally at home, for about two thirds the price.

The week came to an end on the terrace bar of the Yacht club, the sun sinking low and the beers sinking lower. We said goodbye to The Shipmates, and then Mrs SteerRollDash and I toddled off to catch the ferry home.

The Plan (Part 1)

I came to sailing late in life. I've always been interested in sailing but people from my background don't get into sailing. The average working class boy growing up in West London is usually a football fanatic who follows cricket in summer.

As it happens, I was absolutely useless at sport being overweight and not a naturally athletic person. At that time in the Sixties being useless at football automatically put you in the category of second class person. Always last to be chosen in the 'pick-ups'. Largely ignored on the pitch, even though I used to try really hard.

Thanks to a really good PE teacher in High School, I learned that being useless at sport didn't necessarily imply you couldn't enjoy it. It was the competition that mattered and I found that I was very competitive. In my early twenties I got into Rugby (late for starting Rugby, but that's the story of my life), a game much more suited to my physique. I loved playing and it broke my heart when I had to give it up thanks to a combination of injury and a part-time degree course which gradually ate up more and more of my time (I got a first, so ultimately it was worth it).

It was the America's cup series of the late 70s and early 80s that awakened my interest in sailing. I had always been attracted to big boats ever since I was small and even the pathetic TV coverage of the time (it hasn't got much better) really touched off something inside of me. I had an abortive attempt to get into it in the 90s when my two sons were little, but the time wasn't right and after some initial dinghy sailing I couldn't make the jump into big boats, the sailing I was only really interested in at the time.

So I get to my mid forties and a certain Ellen Macarthur bursts onto the scene. Someone bought me 'Taking on the World' and after reading it I was fired up. If this slip of a girl from Derbyshire could achieve all this, I had no excuse for not trying. The initial plan was to start sailing in Dinghies then move onto the big boats through RYA courses and mile-building packages, hopefully ending up with my own boat one day.

And the plan was a good one. I joined a club sailing on a gravel pit not too far from where I lived. Intitially, the club struck me as being a bit cliquey but I persisted and got to know everyone a bit better and started to really enjoy sailing there, especially enjoying the racing. I started doing evening classes in navigation and, through a trip to the Southampton Boat Show, hooked up with a small company offering sailing weekends and cruises.

My partner and I booked up for fortnight's cruise around the Channel Islands. After this experience, I was really hooked.