Apprenticeship

Where did you serve your sailing apprenticeship?

Did you start with your family as I think the vast majority of people have done in the UK at least? Or through scouts or sea cadets?


I was trying to find my sailing CV from around ten years ago when I decided to actually draw one up, having had both a significantly better apprenticeship and career development than in my side hobby of working for a living. . Thought it may be good for posterity to post here, but I may need to cover too many facts to protect the innocent and guilty from some of the wee stories in italics I'd like to add.

I had a childhood of messing about in boats and on my dads 27 foot boats, later graduating from cubs to sea scouts. All this though was without any real direction and a god awful lack of teaching and HSE. Shudder to think that our Patrols used to sail not only without a rescue boat but also without any adult supervision. Gasp and struggle for breath at the thought they use to send errant 14 year olds off round Bute as an expedition with the same total lack of coverage, and a ten pence piece or two to phone in from the call box on Ettrick bay!

I gave up sailing more or less aged 15 and I remember only sailing a bit on keilder with venture scouts, and and with a freind of my father, delivering through the Crinan canal in about 1987.  He was surprised that I did not know what "bear away" meant and suddenly all my aimless pottering about in boats being a passenger by-in-large became an embaressment.

Racing did however hold an allure ever since I saw the classic boats and Etchells sailing in fleets around my home town. This simmered away in me, and being from a sea-faring family it was in my blood and bound to come out one day.

Eventually I got in with a crowd who had sailed Drum under Arnold Clark and various other local boats and dinghies. Soon I was invited out as able bodied idiot in the pit of snakes and elbows.

Not long after my first dabbeling I was invited out unbeknowingly on one of the last infamous, idiotic boats around: a beneteau First Class Europe.  It was a feisty beast, a kind of cross between the old ton designs with a spindely rig and the more modern french hulls with beamy, rounded, blunt transoms. I was number two on foredeck ( which it needed with the way they gybed it) and occaisional runners' boy.

It was a complete baptism of fire rather than a start of an apprenticeship. We had the spinnaker up in a force 8 once and on an overnight I could see seaweed glistening on a rock as we tight reached passed in the dead of night entering Lamlash bay. Drinking was not an amateur affair, nor even on par with proff's. It was on an industrial scale, with cans routinely being cracked open on the start gun and sessions apres voiles lasting until the sun was burning eyes out. I did my usual, crashed out on the sails and had a great night's sleep instead of the sport of "getting into frumpy" the teenage boys were up to in the wee nasty larger than small hours.

Having previously been around a lot of things happening on boats, and now being close in on all from spinnaker work to chart and pencil navigation, I found I picked up everything really fast! It was a great game, especially with the Tarbert overnights back then. The moon rising over Ayrshire and Ailsa craig like a great yellow planet was something I will never forget.

Soon I was bombed off for others who were more worthy as I was pretty rubbish at cockpit and lacked arm strength , this being from years of cycling aas my main hobby-sport. I did manage one and a half seasons but was left out in 1994 and 1995 from major events, steering then my own course towards a proper apprenticeship.

I guess that began with going to the then renkown Tighnabruaich Sailing School with a proposed level 3 RYA sailing course. Glad to see that Derek Andrews and his wife continued the well known tradition of the School which is now almost as old as me! At the time I was miffed at not getting passed to level 3, passing out as a level 2 probably because the instructors didn't follow me on the last two days when I was flying along!

But not to regret this at all, I had a really good grounding from Derek in particular with rope work and keeping the boat tidy, and sailing to the basics, metereology and safety. A really old school way  anchoring my previous yachtie experiences and moving them forward, with one day being in full force gales and much of the week being wet and windy. Remember that thing about never going back - well I did actually go back for some more advanced dinghy skills just for the day trip down and got tips from the daughter of a really good clyde sailor.

Alas the classic old youth hostel is long sold off- it was a grand estate house right at the top of the eastern part of town with a stables and all pretty much in Victroian condition/ probably why they sold it. However the new TSS has chalets and so on and there are hotel deals to be had.

In 1995 then I began my real apprenticship or journeyman years by joining the ranks of a well known sigma 33 locally, my first sail actually being the Tobermory race from Port Banatyne to Ardrishaig and Crinan to Tob.

Worthy of a race report in itself, it was a marathon 14 hour day I remember! A late season on the boat mostly in the pit ensued followed by the early 1996 season being replacement bow man with the aim of the nationals

I passed out at Cork week 1996, which piggy backed the Sigma 33 nationals, under the instruction of no less than Big Neil McGregor as erstwhile coach on our 6 knt tub.  A truly classic week, with some memories that will last me a life time.

As crew on bow and in the pit I was fully qualified to start the serious work of a life time of learning!