Sailing for dummies

The Nelson Mail

The challenge was simple: Nelson Mail reporters were asked to try their hand at something they had always thought about giving a go. That proved a chance for one to overcome some childhood trauma and prove himself a master of the seas.

And all of a sudden I am six years old again. Eleven schoolchildren gather around red and white stripey ropes, manoeuvring them in weird and wonderful ways. Right over left, left over right.

The last time I went sailing, I suffered lifelong trauma. I was six, holidaying in Italy, when my mother threw me aboard a two-man catamaran under the pretence it was character-building. I told her I didn't particularly like sailing, I had plenty of character. She didn't particularly care. She insisted. I frowned.

I don't remember much of the incident but I do remember the mast tipping over in slow motion and me in the water. Then I cried, and accused my mother of trying to kill me. "Deliberate sabotage," I screamed. I was what you could call a paranoid child. That was my first experience of sailing. This is my second.

My teacher at the Nelson Yacht Club is a more British, more weathered and slightly more Olympian version of myself. He even has the same name. But his is better – Charlie Strong. My fellow students, between the ages of nine and 11, are already in full swing when I arrive.

"What knot do we want to use?" Strong asks the panel.

"A granny knot," answers 11-year-old Kit Vining.

"Not a granny knot," Strong answers.

The children laugh, and I laugh along but with little idea of what they are talking about.

The children quickly disperse to put together their little, coloured plastic Optimist dinghies. Joey has a yellow one, Kit has a blue one, Tom has a red one. In goes the mast, the sprit, the sail, the daggerboard, the tiller, the rudder.

They all absorb and repeat the information like regurgitating sea sponges. My mind, on the other hand, has the permeable qualities of the blue Gore-Tex jacket that I am appropriately wearing.

Strong, 26, came to Nelson just over a year ago. He used to sail Lasers as part of the Great Britain Olympic squad, "GBR" as he calls it. I ask how long he has been sailing for.

"There is a picture of me in nappies, sitting on my dad's boat," he answers.

While I am talking to him, the students have already sorted out their granny knots, plugged their bungs and loaded their trailers, and are beginning to heave their two-metre "Oppies" down the boat ramp.

They are laughing, grinning, enthusiastic – all the things that I once was. I smile at their naivety as they slowly wheel their kaleidoscopic jelly beans of turmoil into the water.

I soon discover that I am too big to fit in a jelly bean. Strong tells me Maisie Blackwood will sail with me in a two-man Sun Burst. Maisie is 14 (nearly 15). She likes music (Brooke Fraser, not Miley Cyrus) and Robert Pattinson (not Johnny Depp).

I must weigh almost twice as much as Maisie so I have to sit in the boat rather than on the side. It doesn't look quite as cool as I had hoped. However, after a small while of pulling ropes and shifting sails, I am surprised to learn that, before I know it, I am "tacking"and "jibing" like an old sea dog. I even start using words like "tacking" and "jibing". And "reaching".

"It's like I've been doing it for years," I triumphantly proclaim to Maisie.

"It's only five-knot winds," Maisie replies, rolling her eyes.

"So what's the most you have been out in?" I ask.

"Thirty-five," she says. For a minute I go silent.

It is perhaps 20 minutes into our adventure when I find out Maisie hasn't even realised that I am a reporter for The Nelson Mail doing an article on learning to sail.

"So you have been thinking I am just this weirdo who wants to go sailing with kids?" I say.

"Kind of," she replies.

Despite her concerns it is not long before I am handed the tiller. I am, for the first time in my life, a skipper. We close in on Kit, who up until now believed himself to be the best sailor on the water that afternoon. As we approach the buoy, I steer the Sun Burst on to his outside. My plan is to cut him off as we round the mark. My eyes narrow, my grip tightens. I have one goal – beat the 11-year-old. I instruct my crew to prepare to jibe.

"Penalty!"

The single three-syllable word pierces the five-knot winds like a sharp pin to my dream balloon. Charlie Strong has called me out for an illegal manoeuvre.

"Illegal?" I shout. "What about pirate law?"

There is no such law, Strong says.

I have to give way to Kit.

Strong decides he has seen enough of my skill to upgrade my vessel from the slightly fluffy-sounding Sun Burst to the much more intimidating and more appropriate Flying Dutchman. This boat is heavier, faster and entirely more wooden. But the basics are the same.

"Why do we call it a boom?" Strong asks the panel.

"Because when it hits your head it goes `boom'," the children answer in semi-unison.

The basics might be the same, but it has a difference – the Dutchman has a trapeze.

A trapeze requires wearing an awkward harness with a hook on the end and it's much more difficult to put on than it looks. I struggle with a few straps, haul it over my thighs and compromise my masculinity for a short while.

"Once you wear a harness you are never the same," Strong tells me.

I fear he may be right.

We push the boat out into the water. It sleeks in like an excited labrador. We jump aboard, the wind finds the sail and the Dutchman lurches forward. Breeze in the hair, sun in the eyes – this is what they call sailing.

"Get on the trapeze," Strong tells me.

I shuffle along the edge of the Dutchman and heave my little hook on to a small elastic hoop attached to the mast. This little hook is supposed to hold my weight as I fling myself off the side in one glorious motion.

I slip. My boat shoes, that have never been on a boat until now, are failing me.

I recover. Slowly stand. Let go and ... freedom.

"I feel like Kevin Costner in Waterworld," I shout.

"Yeah, but you are not living in a post-apocalyptic existence and don't have any gills," Strong answers.

"Just you wait Charlie, just you wait."

Mike Rose isn't a scholar; he is a take-it-easy kind of sailor – self-professed.

"Pull the f......g spinnaker in." he yells. "The spinnaker!"

Moments pass until I realise Rose is actually talking at me. I watch helplessly as the rainbow-coloured sail flaps like a sad old kite in 18-knot winds.

It's my fault. The spinnaker was my job.

It is a Wednesday evening race for members of the Tasman Bay Cruising Club. About 20 boats, much larger than jelly beans, are on the water.

These are real boats with names like Blackout, Red Blooded, Thundercloud and G-Force. These aren't jelly beans, or Dutchmen – these are yachts.

The weather has cleared since this morning. The rain has gone and a dim white sun fights its way through thinning grey clouds.

Out of the Cut, the sea is different. The waves are big and I think back to Maisie and how impressed she would be. Driving wind and sea spray hits the face like a sharp dose of reality. Rose's boat, Farr-a-way, dips and rises on the crest of each break.

On the Sun Burst I was skipper; on this yacht I am ballast – throwing myself over each side of the vessel with each tack and jibe. You won't get Rose off the tiller easily. The crew call him "Velcro".

It is hard to follow what is going on before the start of the race. A few horn blasts signal something. There is some swearing, some accusations about breaking rules and false starts. And then, it begins.

Farr-a-way isn't the fastest boat on the water. I find that out pretty quickly. With legs dangling over the side, it feels like I can almost reach out and touch the yacht creeping up on the outside. The man at the wheel looks over and smiles. It's like he has seen through my disguise and realised that I am no sailor.

Rose tacks away to find better wind. I slide over, hang my legs out the other side and pretend to know that my job is important – to pretend that I am a sailor.

We ebb away from the fleet but before too long it has joined us and the mark is soon approaching. We round it, and face down wind. The weather is breaking and so is my nerve.

The call goes out to unleash the spinnaker. There is no agreed reason over why it is called a spinnaker but apparently there is a science to using it. Rose says it is time to fly. The crew rip it out of its bag and attach it to a halyard. It is hoisted rapidly and then let go and fills with wind. Farr-a-way breaks away.

For a moment it is quiet, still. There is no shouting, no frantic movements, just the simple enjoyment of speed on the home straight.

Over my shoulder, I hear murmerings about holding a rope. "Make sure you keep hold of it," someone says. "Don't let go."

And then it releases. The spinnaker whips past my face. It doesn't seem like an efficient way to let down a sail. There is a reason for that – it isn't.

Swearing ensues. Swearing directed at me.

The spinnaker flails. I flail. I stutter and stall and look around for something to do.

One of the crew members jumps on the floor and heaves the sail into the boat.

"Put it in the bag," Rose says to me. He looks disgusted.

By the time the disgust wears off, the main sail is down and we are back in the marina.

Out come the beers and the cheerios. They make me feel better. That and the fact we still managed to beat my sailing enthusiast work colleague. At least I have that. Cheerios have never tasted better.

I am, it seems, the type of sailor only a mother could love.