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.