Tuesday 4th October 2011 – Yacht Master Prep Day 2

I was far too exhausted after being put through my paces to write this last night, so its being written at 6am instead!

I felt really confident on day 1 with my skills and felt I was heading in the right direction, today has felt very different.  I didnt know if it was my hormones, or that fact that our lovely Indian summer was coming to an end, but I felt down on myself , a constant lump in my stomach and a feeling that I just couldn’t do it!  Its not like me at all, and quite scary as I have always believed in a self-fulfilling prophesey – if you think you are going to fail at something, you generally do, and the converse is true!

Alan is a very good teacher, he is very clear, concise but also very sympathetic to the fact I am new to this!

There has been some wonderful sunrises on this trip!

Lots of skills completed today, starting with picking up a buoy under sail, which is a skilled thing in itself, but we were doing it in the river just down from Dittisham, and the winds were very flukey!  Many skills covered today, which I shall just skim through here as I really need to get on with revising………I brought Nashira onto the wall at the pontoon in the town, blind navigation which involved sitting at the chart table, only knowing the log (distance travelled) and the depth, and giving orders to the helm and crew where you want the boat pointing and finding your way there.  A bit like pin a tail on the donkey really, but this time, you couldn’t peek through the poorly applied blindfold! Much time spent on sailing skills, tacking, gybing (safely!) and man overboard under sail.

Back into Dartmouth, laying the anchor (I now know it really isnt “dropping” it) and time for dinner.  My spaghetti carbonara seemed to go down a treat, although Alan called it bacon and eggs when I announced what our fayre would be!

Dinner over, it was back out again out to sea and complete pilotage in the dark, sailing around a port hand mark, safe gybing and then of course the man over board.

The man overboard is so important, and we often laugh and joke about it, but it is very serious, because it is a drill for an emergency situation!  Alan calls his MoB “Doris” which was a bit of a shock, as thats the nickname John has fashioned for me (“Bossy Doris” in actual fact!) so MoB was a little disconcerting!

We eventually made it back to our anchorage at 11pm and settled down to a glass of wine each before crashing down!  So, its really good morning, but of course, in the spirit of this blog, its goodnight!