Practical Boat Owner - July 2018

Sailing can be

simply sizzling

Get on the water in three easy steps...

but have your golf clubs at the ready

I

n my exhausting series of in-depth

expert beginners’ guides on

everything to do with sailing the one

thing we haven’t covered in depth,

or even at all, is sailing, and more

specifi cally how to do it. This is

deliberate, for in order to avoid

unnecessary distress and confusion

the editor asked me

not to, even though

other PBO writers

are permitted to.

That didn’t seem

fair to me, so I

attended a one-day

conference and found out everything.

I’d like to share it with you, so the next

fi ve minutes will take you through the

rudiments and basic techniques, on to

mastery and how to win an Olympic gold

medal. First though, I need to sell you on

the whole concept of sailing. I also

learned how to do that at the conference,

in a one-hour workshop on sausages. As

a result of that one hour I’m getting new

business cards with the job title ‘Oceans

Advocate’. Prepare to be advocated.

Now I want you to visualise a frying pan

full of sausages. You’ll have to imagine

one, but the PowerPoint presentation had

a picture to make your mouth water.

To get people sailing, as our charismatic

instructor-motivator explained, the Oceans

Advocate needs to ‘sell the sizzle, not the

sausage,’ or quite

possibly ‘sell the

sausage, not the

sizzle,’ certainly one

or the other or

possibly both, or

maybe even the

frying pan (I got a bit distracted as the

sausage picture made me hungry).

Vegetarians weren’t catered for in this

workshop, but I strongly believe that

vegetarians are people too and should be

allowed to go sailing. If you’re one, try

visualising a carrot (avoid sausages made

of quorn; they’ll make you feel queasy).

Here, then, is the sizzle.

First and foremost, if you’re a novice it

will be greatly reassuring to know that

‘A fl appy sail is not a

happy sail, so pull them

in until they stop fl apping’

Claudia Myatt

people have been sailing for thousands

of years, although most leisure sailors opt

for shorter cruises as, over time, the food

will eventually either run out, go off or

explode – as often happens with bangers

• forcing you to rely purely on polystyrene
  for sustenance.
  The main nutritional ingredient of
  polystyrene is polystyrene, which can be
  found in both the container and contents
  of the popular one-pot polystyrene
  noodle. On circumnavigations by
  extremely slow boats or any voyage
  undertaken with the aid of a sextant these
  have been known to mature to the point of
  being edible.
  Most boats come with polystyrene
  noodles as standard. Once these have run
  out, as recorded in the annals of countless
  inspiring sea-survival stories, many
  committed blue-water sailors have been
  known to experiment with fi shing – but this
  doesn’t work.
  In reality though, a lot of skippers and
  crew avoid starvation by having
  arguments on the second day and going
  home. If you’re a solo sailor and you have
  an argument that means you’ve gone
  mad. I bet you can’t wait to give sailing a
  go, but wait – I haven’t quite fi nished
  selling the sizzle.
  Now, long before sailing was invented in
  the 1960s by Tom Cunliffe, the
  Mesopotamians, Polynesians and the
  French had been doing it for at least six
  years. In short, to sail is to navigate a
  course through all of history and time, with
  the wisdom of the ages at your command.
  For aeons experts have hit rocks and
  other boats and somehow managed to
  miss entire continents. If they can do that,
  you can too. I promise. That’s the sizzle,
  now the sausage:
  Lesson one: a fl appy sail is not a happy
  sail, so pull them in until they stop
  fl apping. By now you should be moving. If
  not, check whether you are still at anchor
  or tied to a pontoon.
  Lesson two: adjust the sails in and out,
  and move the tiller this way and that. This
  is known as 'steering' and sometimes has
  some effect.
  Lesson three: If you get somewhere, fi nd
  the nearest tourist information offi ce and
  ask for a local map. This will have the
  name of the town on it. Never, under any
  circumstances, ask the harbourmaster
  where you are; this will make you look like
  an amateur.
  I didn’t learn this on a course, but it
  works for me. And if that doesn’t make
  you want to take up golf, I’m not the
  Oceans Advocate I thought I was.

Dave Selby is the proud owner of a 5.48m (18ft)

Sailfish, which he keeps on a swinging mooring

on the picturesque Blackwater estuary in Essex

Mad about the boat

Dave Selby

“Nothing to it, this sailing...”