When we bought the boat and decided that we were going to embark on this journey… we knew there would be a lot to do. Even armed with this knowledge, it was still pretty hectic getting everything done in time and figuring out how to even do a lot of it!
This is part one of a number of things we did before leaving for our adventure. Naturally, step one was learning how to sail…!
A Lack of Sailing Experience #
Okay, so the title is a little unfair. Sean has been sailing since he was 6 years old, and spent many years racing on his dad’s keelboat. So although he had never been the Skipper or Captain of a boat, it’s fair to say he knew what he was doing.
Myself? I was clueless. My sailing experience totalled one lesson on a French beach when I was a teenager, an hour on a boat with a friend on a lake in Canada (he told me what ropes to pull when), and then one afternoon racing on Sean’s dad boat on our first trip to South Africa together. When I say I raced on the boat, I was what they call ‘rail-meat’ - part of the crew that runs from side to side on different tacks to help balance the weight and flatten the boat. All I learned from that was when someone shouts ‘tack’ - quickly get to to the other side!
So it was pretty clear I would need to learn. Helpfully, there’s a training school just North of Edinburgh in a little town named South Queensferry. There you can find Port Edgar Sailing School which runs a number of courses, including the RYA’s keelboat ‘Start Sailing’.
Beginning to Learn #
The end goal was to do a Day Skipper, and for that, I needed miles under my belt and a basic understanding of how things worked. I signed up for the very first course of the year, keen to start as soon as possible, and turned up in chilly March for my first ever proper sailing lesson!
The lesson was great and the staff were fantastic. The course is structured so that normally you spend a morning in the classroom studying some theory, and then put it into practice out on the water during the afternoon. However, there were some high winds forecast and a potential storm rolling in as the morning progressed. So we reversed this and headed out first thing, coming back in later when it started blowing 30+ knots - with a tow in from the crash boat! It was an adventurous day, to say the least.
The following day was looking to be pretty similar, so they postponed it to the following week. This was definitely the right call as it was still super windy the next day, and we instead had a productive and calm day the following week. I then booked into the Level 2 qualification and crossed my fingers for some better weather! Unfortunately, in between these weekends spent learning was a lot of time in between. It was frustrating when all I wanted to do was learn everything as quickly as I could, but it gave us time to view boats and then eventually buy Selune.
This meant that by the time the Level 2 weekend rolled around, I went along with my very own pair of fouley’s (foul weather gear), and as the (joint) owner of my own keelboat! Even though I had very little idea how to sail one! It felt as crazy as it sounds.
After the second course, it sadly wasn’t possible for me to do Level 3. However, this wasn’t the end of the world as I now understood the basics of sailing and safety. Armed with this, we were ready to take our own boat out for the first time!
Sailing Selune for the First Time #
Taking the boat out for the first time was honestly terrifying, but also just so much fun! I had a go at steering, we struggled to get the in-mast furling sail out for a good 20 minutes, and we made it safely into our mooring at the end (it was close, but no person or boat was harmed!) Thankfully, we had Sean’s dad with us at the time who was a huge help as he’s owned a number of boats.
From the courses and us taking the boat out a few times, I finally had enough hours under my belt to complete a Day Skipper! Sean already had one, but he thought it would be a good idea to keep working on his skills and earn a Coastal Skipper too.
Getting a Day Skipper #
Unfortunately, doing a Skipper qualification on the East of Scotland is pretty much impossible (apart from maybe up North?) so we had to head to the West coast. We found and booked our courses with Go West Sailing.
All that was left to do was study the theory. You were required to have completed this and passed the exam before doing the practical, but boy did I underestimate just how much content there would be. I really tried my best, studying in the morning before work, on my lunch breaks, and into the evenings but I just couldn’t get it all done in time sadly. I emailed to check it would still be okay, they said yes, and so I hoped that I had learned enough!
Myself and Sean booking with the same company also meant that we could book the courses at the same time, which would of course begin and end in the same place. We travelled together and then said goodbye at the office where we each went to learn different things.
I was excited but also really nervous, however thankfully I had no real need to be. Go West Sailing was fantastic - they had really friendly members of staff, and I was with a great group of people. It would have been great to have had a little bit more wind, but that was my only real complaint from the week!
During the course we had a lot of practice ensuring we understood the process behind a tack and a gybe, the different points of sail, how to really skipper a boat, how to be a good crew member, a number of different manoeuvres, and mooring.
There was even a night sail part of the journey, that I volunteered to be in charge of (no one else seemed keen…) which meant I had to moor in a marina in the dark! It was honestly exhilarating, but not an experience I really enjoyed - and perhaps there’s a reason myself and Sean have chosen to never enter a marina after dark!
By the end of the courses, we were both leaving with better sailing knowledge and skills, as well as more confidence in ourselves. Sean left with his Coastal Skipper… and I left with the promise of my Day Skipper when I had completed the theory! No one on my course had managed to study it all, so they made it a condition of our Day Skipper that we had to successfully pass the exam before they would send it to us. Although it was slightly disheartening to leave without the official qualification, it did make complete sense and I was really glad for the extra push of motivation to complete the Skipper exam.
And that was the first and most important thing we did to prepare for our journey. After all we likely wouldn’t have gotten very far without learning how to sail, or having the confidence that we had the skills to do so.