Christine's latest adventure!

Here at GTC we've been following the adventures of Christine Davies as she learns to sail... we are delighted to say she has arrived safely back on dry land after her latest sortie on the high seas!




“Feel the luff!” I’d heard a similar phrase in a Yoga class, but I had always assumed it was part of a meditation - “Breathe deeply and feel the love”….. Like so many things in our everyday consciousness, it has a nautical derivation. On a sailing boat once a sail is hauled up, the halyard (that’s what you pull it up with) must be pulled tight so that the tension passes from the mast to the edge of the sail. The person at the mast must then feel the edge of the sail - the luff edge, and signal to the person on the winch controlling the halyard - that it is tight; ie. not flapping in the wind. If it’s not tight enough, then they signal with a finger in a circular motion, to keep on winching.
There seems to be no limit to what there is to learn about sailing. My second week in a 60 ft Clipper, Ariel, was less intimidating than my first attempt. This time I knew what to expect. But nothing could prepare me for three “Man Overboard” drills - one in the middle of the night. Time after time the Skipper, Juan, hurled a fender overboard and we all sprang into action. The marker buoy was instantly dropped into the sea to give a higher level visual beacon, and we all raced on deck to pull down the sails. Someone switches on the engine, and the boat turns round. The idea is to come alongside the person in the sea, on the downwind side, and a crew member who has scrambled into a harness is lowered over the side attached to a halyard. By this time we have pulled up floorboards and prepared a flat stretcher to which the Man Overboard is strapped, in case they have received spinal injuries, and in preparation for helicopter evacuation.
Of course there is much banter as the “rescued” person is tied to the board with sail ties, and in one case a serious debate about whether or not they should be lowered into the cabin head first. A doctor amongst the crew said not, the Skipper said that it was protection against a potential heart attack. Not being medically qualified I just put the floorboards back when it was over.
Our Skipper Juan gave no quarter, and we each had to carry out every part of the daily maintenance on board ship. That meant washing down the boat with disinfectant every morning, checking the engine oil and filters, filling in the log with our sailing co-ordinates every hour, and attempting to understand every part of the daily regime. “Get in the engine room Christine, and check the day tank. I want that much fuel “ A gesture of about six inches. I had to crawl into a hatch and look at a plastic pipe with a metal gauge. The gauge has to be pulled out and the fuel level drops to the actual reading. It stuck and I had to whack it with my torch. Then I had to pump a wooden handle to fill the tank to Juan’s six inch reading. It would be easy to retch at the smell of diesel in the cramped darkness. I decided not to breathe. But I did it.
What I didn’t do however, was get into the bowman’s harness and scramble up the spinnaker mast. That was for the young and agile, and there is a limit to how much of an idiot I can look. Most of the others enjoyed it enormously, especially Emma, a young home economics graduate who races sailing dinghies in her spare time. She became so proficient, that she was ordered to don the harness when our major drama hit. In the dark our spinnaker (a massive racing sail the size of a house) wrenched one corner from the attached sheet (rope) and began flapping wildly. Juan looked worried. He shouted in the dark - “It can go under the boat and wrap itself round the keel” I didn’t like to ask what that meant. But it didn’t sound good. Everyone sprang into action. The wind changed and Juan told us he had to gybe, which means that the boom swings to the other side of the boat, a dangerous manoeuvre even in good sailing conditions. At the same time, Emma was to be pulled up the mast to “spike” the attachment holding the spinnaker in place, releasing it, then we were all to leap and haul the spinnaker in through the hatch. There was a danger that if we didn’t catch it, it could either fly away or fall into the sea. At about £2000 a sail that was a worst case scenario to be avoided. I could see that the normally laconic Juan was on edge. “We have to do this now” he shouted over the wind, with the sound of the billowing sail cracking menacingly. I clipped myself to the guide rope that runs along each side of the boat from bow to stern. The only useful thing I could think of to do was to shine a torch at the winches, so that the crew manning them could check the colours of the sheets they were easing. In the dark there were so many snakes of rope on the floor of the cockpit that it could be easy to ease or grind the wrong one. Emma was winched up on a halyard, and shouted that she had spiked, then we all lunged for the edge of the falling spinnaker. In a slow motion Bruce Willis moment, Fred, a sailing instructor from Sydney, leapt with arms upward and caught the loose corner. We yelled and then the sail was pouring through the hatch, yards and yards of it. In the hours afterwards there were screams of laughter as we wearily bunched it up again, tying it tightly every 12 inches in black wool. Then it has to be folded into its sail bag so that it will spring readily out again when the wind is behind us and we are ready to give the boat full sailing power. We had done this so many times that we decided that we would fill it with cornflakes for the next training crew. Or knickers, someone helpfully suggested.
It was good to be at sea with so many women crew. There was always the sound of chattering and laughter. “What would you think of an all women crew Fred?” I asked him in the pub. “We could hang our washing along the rail.” He choked into his beer. “Laundry halyard going up” said Jake, a divine young man who works in the Neurology unit of a major London hospital. Beyond the jokes though, I think that women at sea are tolerated rather than encouraged. One crew member, who shall remain nameless, had sailed professionally most of his working life. He said that sailors are very superstitious. For example, they will never start a voyage on a Friday. He had delayed his flight to England so that he travelled on a Saturday, even though he then had to be on board on the Sunday. I looked at him. “What about women on board ?” something made me ask. “Women at sea are bad luck “ he said. I had the feeling that he was uncomfortable with us, and I kept a low profile when he was on deck. But it is as well to know.
The week passed too quickly. Even an hour’s sleep in a bunk I could hardly get into seemed a luxury, Fred’s gentle snores below were miles away as I sank into exhausted oblivion, and then it would be time again to get up in the dark, pull on my waterproofs and announce my arrival on deck. “Christine coming on deck” It is etiquette to identify oneself to the helmsman. Then I could sit and gaze in wonder at the stars, and the stars beyond the familiar ones, in a blanket sky so deep that I longed to be wrapped up in its beauty.
There are so many precious moments at sea when you just feel the cutting edge of life; the wonder of our existence, the magic of the endless cycles of dawn and dusk, time and tide, wind and wave. It’s like a chemistry set that always has another formula you haven’t experienced before. There is a silent solidarity with those you share the moments with; you “feel the love” of human frailty and the exhilaration of shared endurance. There is never a moment to dwell on your own inner questions; the only reality is the sheer physical pain of pushing yourself to be a competent member of the team. And the huge pleasure of succeeding. And now I have my Part A Certificate guys - stand by to hear about Part B - on an even bigger boat !
Christine