You Seriously Expect me to Take the Helm?

It’s day 3 of our Scottish learn to sail experience and we’re off to Portovadie Marina. And just as I am starting to relax, safe in the knowledge that it’s Stuart that’s training to be a skipper and not me, I find that I am asked to take the helm after all. Surely that can’t be right… it’s not what I was told on day 2.

What you want me to take charge?

Today I am asked to take the helm and direct the rest of the crew to competently manage sails, reefs, compass and wind direction. Seriously? We are to have a race around four buoys. I can’t see the buoys in the wide expanse of water and I have no idea how to get around them. Hannah and I are a team. Simon shouts orders and we respond too late or not at all. Then the others form teams and do it properly.

Simon tries to teach me the points of sailing. He does it by sailing. I would rather he did it with a diagram and a cup of tea in the cabin. He makes me a cup of tea, but I stll don’t understand points of sailing.

Welcome to Portovadie Marina

We pull into Portovadie, a new marina. Very impressive toilets, which make the Victorian efforts from Rothesay look like loos from another century. Which they are. These toilets are like posh hotel loos. They even have hair straighteners in the men’s. I don’t find this out by going into the men’s. I am not a men’s toilet inspector. It’s Phil who tells me about the straighteners. Phil is almost bald so I’m not sure why he noticed them. Eyebrows?

Pontoon bashing?

As the sun washes over the bay in the early evening we do some pontoon bashing. I feel like a learner driver in charge of someone else’s Rolls Royce as I haul the yacht around the harbour, reversing and pushing it into first gear, narrowly missing other yachts. I have to do a handbrake turn, something I am not even good at doing in a car! No one bashes the pontoons completely and we retire to the bar for a pint to celebrate.