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.