Serendipity (1)

When I crossed over into the safety boat I think I was slightly in shock. Very cold but not yet hypothremic, and feeling really sorry for myself I plonked myself down on the side of the RIB.



"What's your name mate?" I didn't feel like talking but told the helm my name anyway. He introduced himself as Dave and his crew was called Ray. It was a bit like meeting someone in a pub, it was that casual. We carefully motored around my boat, upside down in the water. Strange to say, I had never seen her in the water from that angle before. I had seen her inverted of course, but only from a glug glug perspective, not from above. She looked undignified, injured. I hadn't realised just how attached I was to her.


"Give us a hand to pull her up" said the crew. We both put a foot on the upturned gunwale and pulled on the centre board. She came up to 90 degrees easily. He hadn't needed my help at all, I realised, he just wanted me to do something. "Let's get her to the shore". We motored around to the tip of the mast and I helped the crew pull it onto the boat. We motored back to shore with my boat skimming along on its side, with me sitting on the mast. Dave and Ray chatted to each other about the wind and asked me about where I had come from. They dropped me at the slipway, wished me luck and zoomed off to the next rescue.

It was only after a couple of days I thought about what a good job Ray and Dave had done. No dramas, as my Aussie friends say, nothing complicated, just simple, straightforward, honest to goodness help. OK, I didn't go back on the water that day, but how many people did go on to have a good day's sailing because of Ray and Dave?

In one of those strange twists of fate, an email popped up in my mailbox a few days later. The manager of the centre where I sail had heard that we were looking to run the disabled sailor's club an extra day a month in the summer. He couldn't offer us safety boat cover for that session but was willing to offer someone a place on the appropriate training courses for a greatly reduced fee, so we could provide our own cover. The snag was, there were all in the following 3 weeks. I decided to take the plunge and that's why, dear blognaut, I haven't been posting for a week or two.

The first course was a basic powerboat course lasting for two days over a weekend. I turned up not at all apprehensive. I can drive and I can sail. How hard could it be? That was answered when I hit the pontoon with an almighty wack 30 minutes later as I took the helm for the first time. The boats we were on were 14ft dories with outboards. Having never (no, never) handled a twist grip throttle I forgot which way to turn it to let the power off and went the wrong way. I hit it the pontoon so hard they actually had to lift my bow off the tyres lining the pontoon. "Don't worry" said the cheery 16 year old who was in the boat with me "That's what they're there for!".

I gradually got better going forward and coped with the man overboard exercise well, but when it came round to going backwards or turning in a confined space, I began to feel like I had a power learning difficulty (I can sail backwards almost as good as I can sail forwards) as I wacked the pontoon time after time. Thankfully the next day we had a bit of time to practise by ourselves and I managed to cope a bit better. On the assessment I was slow and cautious, but I managed the exercises.

We all had a one to one session at the end of the course. "I'm please to say you've passed" said the instructor "but its a grey pass. We feel you'll struggle on the power boat course". The Brits amongst you will think I show a shocking lack of humility, but I don't do grey passes. I do excellent or at a pinch very good, but certainly not 'grey' passes. The gauntlet was thrown down. The second I got home I ordered the new RYA Safety Boat manual with DVD and immediately started visualising confident, controlled power boat maneouvres. Grey pass? I'll give them grey pass.