Captain's Log

A sailing course has been on my radar for a couple of years now. The little patch of homesickness I encountered back in Texas persuaded me to take the plunge sooner rather than later, hence my jaunt round the Southern Gulf islands these past six days.

Our vessel, Windfall, was a Bavaria 40. Not quite the height of luxury but a reasonable place to start. She sails well, though a little extra space around the place wouldn't have gone amiss.

Windfall, anchored in Todd Inlet

The berth I shared with Jeff, who snores like a bastard

I came aboard last Thursday, 24th June, armed only with two large sailing manuals that I hadn't read, and not knowing my stern from my shroud. The first guy I met was the Skipper - Victor, a seventy five year old Englishman who first learnt to sail when he was four.

In the morning, the rest of the crew came aboard. Jeff, my cabin-mate is a Canadian who used to fix boats for a living and is going back to sailing after losing the sight of one eye. A top man, he could do with snoring a bit (lot) less. Then a family consisting of James, the dad, his eighteen year old son Asher and sixteen year old nephew Philip. They're a tight little family bonded by a shared love of sailing and singing. Despite having highly dubious hair and bits of lego for ear rings, Phil is a sound guy.

Phil at the helm

Once you're on the boat it's a pretty steep learning curve. Strange words from books take on new meanings as I see what they actually do. We do a few man overboard drills and once I've got the feel for the wheel, it all goes swimmingly. We get the sails up in the afternoon and the feeling of being purely under sail for the first time in my life is exhilarating. This could turn out to be expensive, I think to myself...

First night, under anchor off Russell Island

Cowichan Bay Marina, where I decanted myself into a hotel bed

The days kind of blended together out on the waves. Deprived of sleep, windswept, ill (see previous entry) and dosed up on a cocktail of drugs, it felt not dissimilar to cooking school, with its daily demands upon the body that you just can't keep pace with. Despite all this, I found myself learning quickly, and genuinely enjoying the experience.

Me at the helm. No dramas

Ganges Marina at sunset

The course actually covers Competent Crew and Day Skipper, meaning you have to know sail trimming, reefing, docking, anchoring, navigation, float planning, buoyage, tides, currents and weather as well as the basics of how to sail a boat. This keeps me pretty busy throughout, and means the manuals, by the end of the course, are well dog eared.

Plotting a safe course around Beaver Point

And now, at the end of it all, and rather worryingly, I am certified as the skipper of a live aboard sailing vessel, to be responsible for the safety of vessel and crew, while day sailing in familiar waters, within 10 miles of safe harbor, during daylight, in moderate wind and sea conditions, using basic navigational skills. You'll probably read about it in the papers...

Back in Sidney, cold beer in hand, plotting my next voyage...

Seasick

All great seafaring heroes have something wrong with them. Limblessness perhaps, or some other notable ailment that marks them out as being tougher than the teak down below and a few sails short of a galleon. The harder, madder and badder they get, the more things wrong with them. Not content with only having one eye, Nelson got rid of an arm too, and then managed to crown it all by actually dying on the job.

Whilst I’m not intending to take my sailing heroics quite that far, a triumvirate of unappetising physical ailments have rendered me sufficiently hideous to at least trouble for a few minor honours. An unidentified archipelago of cold sores has developed a few points off my mouth’s starboard bow. Whilst applying the cream, I managed to inadvertently scratch my eye with the same finger and now have a bulging right eye bloodshot to pieces that looks like it would be better off rolling around the deck. In order to protect my fellow crew from this hideous aspect, I have taken to shielding myself from the wind.

My third affliction is internal, in the form of some throat infection that feels like I swallow a bag of tacks every time the watch changes. Luckily I barely have time to think about these things, since we are sailing all day. Learning new manoeuvres, drills, knots. Not to mention words - why the hell does everything need a different name the minute you step off the dock?

Sleeping in ten square feet, next to someone else, in a boat that is bobbing around all bloody night is no mean feat, even less so when dogged by these irritations. Whilst my cabin mate Jeff is no Queequeg (Ishmael’s cannibal bedfellow who slept with his harpoon), I hardly slept the first night at anchor. Last night we docked in Cowichan Bay. As soon as we pulled alongside, I had a shower, and then Jeff and I set about drinking a few barrels of beer each.

Routine enquiries into the possibility of watching the football in the morning were fruitless, whereupon I had the brainwave of checking into the local hotel, thereby enabling myself to a) sleep (with no Jeff) and b) watch the match (in bed, still no Jeff). Some ideas just sell themselves. I used my English accent (together with some clever hand positioning and face angling) to charm the girl on the desk into giving me a huge discount and $150 later I had a suite of rooms for the night, into whose boat-wide bed I promptly passed out.

I might be hideously disfigured, say things like “ready to come about”, stink of salt and sweat and know how to tie knots, but if the Pantheon of seafaring Gods saw me swapping my berth for a four star hotel on my second night at sea, they won’t even let me on the friggin’ island.

Loomings

Call me Joseph. Some days ago - never mind how long ago precisely - having money in my purse, and nothing particularly to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world.

Thursday morning I repacked my bags. This done, I stepped aboard my home for the next seven nights; Windfall. A sailing boat. I should offer to qualify this by stating that I have never been aboard a sailing boat in my life, have never slept upon the waves, and have not the faintest idea what I am letting myself in for. But some siren voice, fathoms deep within me, obliges me to learn to sail.

I slung my duffel over the side with more than a little trepidation. I am not a natural upon the water. In fact I fear it deeply. Perhaps it is the uneasiness one feels when presented with the relentless motion, or that peculiar sensation of suddenly not being a part of the earth. The water, the sea, the ocean; these things are so unfamiliar to a landlubber like me that they are as alien as the inside of the womb.

And then there is the other thing, of course. The sense of adventure, yes, but the allegorical adventure too - what the sea and sailing represent. And what the Great book I so crassly parodied alludes to; and which reflects itself so immaculately in all our actions; that human nature is compelled to fear, hate and hunt the very things that will ultimately destroy it.

For the next week, I think I have a sufficiently thick hull between me and the deep blue sea to keep me safe from harm. Our captain is no Ahab, quite the opposite; he is but a 75 year old Englishman named Victor - gentle of spirit but occasioning to furiously polite commands. And though I feel not embarked upon some hell wrought quest, I will be weary of any in whose shadow I should happen to stand, lest I should find myself bound to some other man's fate.