Sales Training & Skippering

Long time, no blog entries !!

I've been very busy getting the business going and had some early success. In fact given the short time that it's been up and running, we've had some very encouraging interest. Our first customer was Mitel Networks who are a global manufacturer of IT equipment. They were followed by Redstone Converged Solutions who are in the same market and Anite Telecom who make mobile phone testing hardware and software. We're very close to signing up another 2 or 3 companies as well. Mitel are having all of their sales people trained by us as well some other customer facing personnel. We've trained them all in general sales skills already delivering the courses over the last two months. Negotiation skills, Account Planning and Forecasting are still to be delivered between now and the end of October.

We are finding that a few areas are of particular interest to sales teams and one of them is forecasting. There may be an opportunity to design some forecasting software or at least act as a reseller for an existing software house. It's also been quite surprising how many companies don't have any stating sales cycle or structured qualification processes. Some parts of our courses go down very well including a session on "how sales people are measured" and discussion about being out of one's comfort zone.

We've tentatively come up with an acronym that encompasses all of the cornerstones within our methodologies which is.....PROMPT Selling. It stands for Proposition, Retain, Opportunity, Measurement, Process & Traits. We need to develop it further and then get it registered as a trademark.

Oh yea, we've also re-designed our logo - well, when I say "we" I mean Richard's (my business partner), daughter's boyfriend, a design student. And a good job he's done as well, I think you'll agree

I have also been busy on the water doing some skippeing for a company in the Solent called Impression Sailing who are a very nice bunch of people. The work has mainly consisted of taking complete novices out racing for the day which has proved to be extremely challenging. However, like most things in life, it's also hugely rewarding, especially when you get them all back safely alongside and they've had a good day. Interestingly enough, you have as many sailing qualifications as you like but you only really start learning when you do it for real. It's one of those disciplines that will take years and years to master and every single time I go out I learn something new.

You certainly wouldn't do it for money though. It must be the most disproportionate job in terms of pay versus responsibility. It's really good experience though - we obviously want to be providing this sort of thing to our customers in the future. We have in fact already got one customer that is interested in doing some team building on yachts later this year. We're also speaking to a number of companies about the prospect of sponsoring a regatta next year that may involve between 10 and 15 boats.

Other news - I am currently living in Poole in a flat with a magnificent view over the harbour, but it's a bit rubbish in terms of location for work. So, I'm moving at the end of September and the likely place is looking like St Albans, just north of London. I've got a facebook profile (because I am young, hip and trendy). There is lots of sailing photo's there for the lovers of all things yachting.

We should be sailing this week, down the south west coast, however, the weather has put paid to that, lots of force 6 & 7 winds in the channel and rough sea. It was supposed to be a week of glorious sailing and chilling but we had to knock it on the head in the end - it just wasn't much fun, bashing through big seas. So, we're getting some work done instead.

That's all for now.

Sales AND Sails

Hi there,

Well I finished the Ocean Graduate course at UKSA on the 2nd February and have been setting up a business ever since. The business combines my sales skills from my previous life and my new found sailing skills in order to provide sales training and team building - on yachts of course. It's called Sales & Sails, the website is http://www.salesandsails.co.uk

I'm going into business with one of my previous colleagues, Richard Clark and he's just passed his Ofshore Yachtmaster in Gibraltar so it's all systems go. I am close to getting my first client but if anyone knows of any companies that want sales training or team building I would love to hear from you - paul.james@salesandsails.co.uk

I also hope to be doing some freelance skippering for charter companies this summer and I've got an interview and afternoon out on the water this Friday with Impression Sailing based in The Hamble.

I'm moving down to Bournemouth on the 29th March to a flat that is only one minute from the beach and has a balcony that looks out over Poole harbour. I seem to be drawn mysteriously to the sea !!

I'll keep popping back here to update you on what I am up to at various points in the future.

Take it easy...

Paul James - Yachtmaster

Yep, I passed the Yachtmaster exam this weekend. It was quite a nerve racking experience and I made a few mistakes but the examiner, who seemed to be short on compliments, described it as a "decent effort". The weather was really grim so the exercises were challenging especially the power handling in Cowes. The examiner asked us to manouevre the boat in and around pontoons populated with lots of other boats. The yacht that we were given for the exam was comparatively light and was a nightmare to control in the wind. After power handling we went out into the Solent to do some sailing, anchoring, man over boards, night pilotage into the Hamble and Beaulieu before coming back to Cowes. The next day we did a bit more power work before sailing onto mooring bouys. We were then given a written Collision Regualtions exam and a Passage Planning exercise. I was very relieved when told I had passed and five months of training finally came to fruition.

I have done another slideshow with pictures from the Atlantic crossing. The pictures are in no particular order and there are scenes of alcohol induced celebration that remind me of the sense of achievement we all felt. I have done two versions, one with a rock music soundtrack and one with a mellow one depending on your taste.

This is the rock version.....




This is the mellow version....




I also passed my Power Coastal Skipper yesterday. The various qualifications are a tad confusing, but basically by this time next week I'll be qualified to commercially skipper yachts up to 200 tonnes or 24 metres any where in the world and motor yachts of the same size up to 60 miles off land.

I've only got 3 weeks to go now and I'm looking forward to finishing. I've got various plans for the future which include setting up a B&B in Montenegro with Tricia that will cater for couples where one person likes sailing but the other doesn't, this will naturally mean buying a yacht. We'll then offer land based activites for the land lover and day sailing for the seafarer; setting up a sales training & team building business with a former colleague / friend, the team building being done on yachts; doing some skippering for charter companies either in this country or abroad; doing some IT consultancy with previous contacts. I've pretty well decided that I don't want to go back into corporate life, unless of course nothing else pans out. If the holiday idea appeals to you I'd like some feedback (pljames@hotmail.co.uk).

That's about it for now. Hope all is well in the world for you.

I'm Here !!

Hi,

Very very quick update - I'll do a proper one with lots of pics and video in the New Year. We arrived in Antigua on Christmas morning. I happened to be on watch when the sun came up at about 6:00am and as the sky became slowly, slowly lighter we could just start to see the outline of land. We celebrated with cheese on toast, mince pies and tea. There were only 2 of us on watch when we sighted land so we gave the lads another hour in bed before getting them up with the news of landfall. Every one of them, to a man, lept out of their bunks rushed up on deck, saw the land and couldn't stop smiling for the next 2 hours. We got alongside in what is a very quaint harbour at around 10:00am, spent an hour "putting the boat to bed", and then walked all of 15 yards to a beach style bar. There was a champagne party on the dock organised by the locals at around midday and the atmosphere was incredible. I've got lots of pictures of a very happy crew, sitting together in the sun, on terra firma repeatedly talking about how good it felt to have arrived.

That was four days ago and since then we've been doing alot of chillin and partying. We're flying back to the UK tonight and we're all ready to go home now. In some ways it seems like a long time ago that we set off from Gibraltar but in other ways it seems like yesterday that I boarded the train at Victoria bound for Gatwick.

The passage from the Canaries took 17 days in all and I've loads to tell you but it will have to wait. We nearly decided to find a yacht that had been abandoned by a crew on the ARC race, we were going to claim salvage rights and sail it back to Antigua but in the end decided it would add too much time to our passage and there were too many unknowns about the yacht's sea worthiness, it's exact location and the whole business of salvage rights. We caught some Baracuda, we stopped the boat and swam in the middle of the Atlantic, we saw dolphins and whales and flying fish, we had some beautiful weather and some bad, we lost all communictions to the outside world for about 5 days because our satellite system stopped working (our other long range communications didn't work from the offset) and lots lots more.

Got to dash now. I've got my Yachtmaster exam the first week in January with three days at sea beforehand doing prep so I won't be able to do a proper update until the second week.

Happy New Year, hope you a good Christmas see you soon.

Land ahoy....briefly

Hi all. We´ve completed phase one of this trip by arriving in Las Palmas, Gran Canaria. The passage was about 700 miles and we arrived yesterday, the 7th. So it took a little under 5 days. We didn´t have very favourable wind, which was either not strong enough to make good way or coming from the wrong direction. We´ll be hoping that isn´t the case on the next leg as we are aiming for an average speed of 8 knots to get us to Antigua by Christmas Day. We can, however, rely to a large extent on trade winds which blow from east to west and are consistently over 20 knots. It will take us about 4 days to get down to a line of latitude where we can expect to find these trade winds which is about 20 degrees North and then we´ll change our heading from approximately south west to due west.

The temperature here is about 26 degrees C when the sun is shining and it´s only going to get warmer as we approach the Tropics. The temperature at sea is getting to that perfect stage of not too warm and not too cold and even at night it´s warm enough to stay on deck for a 4 hour watch without getting all togged up in oilies, hats and gloves.

We only had one drama on the way down when the engine failed in the middle of the first night. We were delayed leaving Gibraltar and didn´t get away until about 8pm. The sails were all ready to be hoisted but the skipper decided that we would motor over night due to the wind coming straight towards us and there being alot of shipping in what is a very conjested strait. When the engine gave up the sea state was reasonably rough, made worse by a healthy Atlantic swell and although the sea was by no means monstrous it mean´t that when the engine stopped we were being thrown around a bit - imagine duck in bath. So, all hands on deck, we got the sails up and set about getting the engine sorted. The problem was air in the fuel system so it had to be bled which took a couple of hours.

Apart from that the sailing has been great, sometimes surreal, occassionally boring (mainly between about 1am and 4am) and the crew seems to be getting on well. We learned alot about our consumption of food, water and fuel and as a result we´ve designed various systems for the next leg. We only have enough fuel to about a third of the trip under power as well as charge all the electrical systems. We have needed to impose some conditions on water usage because if we keep using it at the rate we did from Gibraltar to here we will run dry within 12 days. Some of the food we bought in Gibraltar has lasted well but some started to go off almost immediately. This is only going to get worse the further south we go and, therefore, the warmer it gets.

I could go on for ages about various other facets of planning, and wax lyrical about being at sea in an ocean with no light pollution at night (so the stars are amazing) and the feeling of being 100´s of miles away from the nearest land, but as a "friend" recently told me by e-mail, I cured his insomnia with my description of astro navigation in my last update :)

So I´ll dash off now. Have a magnificent Christmas and if you find yourself in the London area over the New Year period, give me a shout. I´m looking forward to a good old fashioned knees up and 5 days off with Tricia (Trish to those that have been subject to the re-branding of a few years back).

Take care, lots of love

me

Slip the lines, stow the fenders away....

Hi, well we've all arrived safely in Gibraltar and today we're off. It's going to take about 4 days to get to the Canaries where we'll top up with water, fuel and perishable food. We're also going to stop for an evening so that we can re-charge our batteries with rest and recuperation or more likely, further deplete them with beer !! We've now decided that we won't be stopping in Cape Verde as we don't have time if we want to reach Antigua by Christmas. We have, however, bought some mince pies, decorations and secret santa presents in case we're still at sea. The weather here is about 20 degrees celsius and sunny. We've got an easterly wind which will take us out of the Straits of Gibraltar nicely and then as we track south we expect the wind to move round to the north so it should all be downwind sailing. There is a regional wind phenomenon here called a "Lavant" which blows through the Straits. The wind can reach 50 knots but it's very localised so if it does occur it should only be short lived.

We've spent the last two days preparing the boat which has been a lot of work, you would be surprised what needs doing to get the boat up to speed for a passage of this distance. Unlike coastal sailing, if something goes wrong or is missing, you can't simply nip into the nearest port and sort it out. I was tasked with victualling yesterday which takes a great deal of planning and buying. We've got 11 people on board and we expect to be at sea for 3 weeks. We've gone for the usual selection of dinners which include Spaghetti Bolognese, Chilli Con Carne, Chicken Curry and Tuna Pasta. We've got some fishing lines on board and we expect to catch some tuna. On previous trips crews have been known to catch six tuna or barracuda, each one big enough to feed the whole crew. We've also worked out a Watch System which consists of a 4 hours on, 8 hours off workload with a duty engineer, mother and cleaner.

I'm looking forward to cracking on with it now and have got the sort of nerves that you get when you are about to do a presentation to a big audience or before playing in a crunch football match. It's hard to know how the rest of the crew feel but I suspect much the same as me.

I hope all is good with you, take it easy land lovers :)

Merry Christmas !!

With the right wind conditions I'll will be in Antigua by Christmas Day, or at least that's the plan. Then I'm thinking four days of sun, sand and the sort of Sea Breezes you drink (in moderate amounts of course), before flying back to London for the mother of all New Year's knees ups. I'm flying out to Gibraltar this Thursday (30th) and then we'll slip silently out of the harbour on Saturday and wave goodbye to our last shower for 3 or 4 weeks. Our precise route is yet to be agreed but the tentative plan is to go south from Gibraltar to the Canaries and then carry on down to Cape Verde which is inside the Tropic of Cancer. This leg should take about 10 days and by the time we reach the Cape temperatures should have risen to about 26 degrees Celsius. We'll then hang a right, point the boat West and have approximately 2,150 nautical miles of Atlantic Ocean between us and Antigua.

I was looking at an Atlantic chart the other day (never let it be said I don't know how to enjoy myself), some of the depths in the middle are about 8,000 metres which is nearly as deep as Everest is high. Traditionally December is when all Tropical Storm (hurricane) activity has ceased and I'm certainly hoping that we don't encounter one, but it's been a very quiet hurricance season so far this year so it's either a low year, or they're late. We'll only be using the stars and the sun to navigate our way across by using a sextant, like this chap.

The purpose of this is so that we can navigate in the event that all of our electronic navigational equipment fails or our generator (produces electricity) packs up, which is not beyond the realms of belief. We practised this a few weeks ago when we did Ocean Navigation Theory and it works. We went over to Sandown beach took some sun sights and then drove over to Ventnor and did some more. There are then numerous different calculations that have to be done on paper but eventually, and much to my surprise, it does give a position on the earth which is very accurate. This skill could be very useful in the future, everyone relies on GPS (car SatNav systems use this) but first of all it's owned by the Americans and they can either turn the accuracy down or turn it off completely and secondly it can be affected by Sun Spots. GPS has been made less accurate in the past, usually when the US is at war and when GPS was invented it was done at a time of low Sun Spot activity but this activity is due to increase in a dramatic way over the next decade so GPS could become less accurate as a result.

Enough about astro-navigation but I do find it a fascinating subject, especially when it comes to the stars and how mariners navigated before modern systems (or even an accurate time piece) had been invented, but I'll save that for smokey pub and a few beers - you lucky people.

I said I would post some pictures in my last update but I seem to be having some trouble doing that at the moment.

Here's a video of the fire fighting training that we did a few weeks ago. One of my colleagues did it. It's about 5 minutes long, there's two bits that are worth watching. Everyone knows that if you try to put out a chip fat fire with water you'll get a fireball but it's demonstrated on this video with impressive results. We all saw the amount of water that was put on the fire and it was no more than half a mug full. The second is an aerosol in a fire, it goes off with quite a bang.

I don't know if we are stopping at the Canaries or at Cape Verde but if we do I'll try to find an Internet cafe and do a quick update.

Take care, Merry Christmas and I'll see you in 07.

Paul

Schools & Fools

Those are the only people sailing at this time of year, especially outside of the relatively safe confines of The Solent. It was, therefore, quite apt that on a recent sail across to Cherbourg we only encountered two other yachts in the whole 130 mile round trip. One yacht was another UKSA boat out training and the other was clearly a fool. Since then we've been out in all sorts of weather. Today for example we sailed from Lymington back to Cowes with the wind reaching 55 knots at times which is a good Force 9. Whenever it's rough, windy or throwing it down with rain and we see another yacht, someone is bound to say "schools and fools".

The trip across to Cherbourg was interesting. I may have mentioned in previous posts that we did a Radar course a while back which at the time was really good fun but when it came to sailing across the busy shipping lanes in the English Channel, the training was invaluable. The radar allows us to track up to a maximum of 10 "targets" in order for us to work out if we are in danger of a collision. We thought that 10 targets would be more than enough but when we were actually in the shipping lanes we wanted to track about 15 at times. As usual the business of collision avoidance at night kept us on our toes, we had a few nervous moments to say the least. The skipper was not one of these people that breezed through high pressure situations with an air of calmness - oh no. He seemed to opt for the "instill as much panic in my crew as possible and genuinely seem like life is about to end horribly" style of leadership. It was good to see the contrast between experienced skippers, which we'd had up to this point, and the one that we had for this sea phase though. As is quite often the case you learn more when something goes wrong than when everything works like clockwork.

The yacht that we had for that sea phase was called a Sweden 42 and it's definitely the best make of yacht I've sailed on, apart from Contessa's of course ;) I helmed it for about 2 hours coming across from Cherbourg in a strong wind and good size sea - it sailed fantastically. It's probably the most fun I've had at the wheel of a boat. I've just found out today that I've got the same yacht for my Yachtmaster exam in January, so I'm really pleased with that. I've also found out that I am being examined with perhaps two of the best sailors in our course, one's a Frenchman and the other is Polish (I'm sure there's a joke in there somewhere). The exam is a two day grilling in which we take the examiner out in the yacht and he can ask us to do anything that's in the syllabus and ask us questions on anything we've been taught. It's the sort of driving test at sea but lasts for two days. The exam is on the first weekend in January so by the time you've all got back to work after the Christmas break I'll hopefully be a Yachtmaster.

I've spent the last 10 days or so "self skippering". As the name suggests we are given a yacht on a charter basis, without a skipper and we're let loose like toddlers learning to walk. I am pleased to report that we didn't bend it and we didn't hit any other vessel. We did however, ensure that our day was done by 6pm latest, and if we weren't in front of a big fire with pint by 6:15, we'd give ourselves a serious talking to. It was a great couple of weeks, when we needed to make hard decisions (or even easy ones) and there was no one to turn to, we found that we could in fact deal with any situation we were faced with. We lost our engine 3 times, we were faced with some seriously windy conditions and we weren't sure whether to order crisps or peanuts with our 4th pint but it all worked out just dandy.

In a week's time I will be in Gibraltar to meet up with the yacht we're crossing the Atlantic on and then a few days later, we're off. We're hoping to be in Antigua for Christmas Day and then we've got 4 days there before we fly back to London, just in time for New Year's Eve. I'm feeling excited about the trip but also a tad anxious - I guess that's fairly normal though.

I am writing this from an Internet cafe and unable to upload photos, however, I am back in my shore based accommodation tomorrow so I'll put some pictures on then.

I'll update this once more in the next week and then not until I get to Antigua.

TTFN

Sailing, fires and messing about on speed boats

Hi, well I'm back on dry land again after a varied and busy couple of weeks. Since my last update (yep, I know it's been a while again), I've spent 3 days in the radar simulator, a week on a Sigma 38 foot racing yacht, a week on a 40 foot catamaran, 2 days on a 26 foot keelboat, 3 days fire fighting and two days in powerboats. I've just started Long Range Radio today which I think is going to be a bit heavy.

The week on the Sigma was mainly spent doing some passages out to the East this time. We left Cowes and went to Ramsgate (just around the corner from the Thames), via Eastbourne. It took about 36 hours and I can safely tell you that the West Country is a lot more interesting than the eastern end of the Channel. The only real thing of notable interest was Dungeness nuclear power station which as you may be able to imagine is an extremely ugly building perched on a peninsula miles from anywhere. Apart from that we passed Brighton, Hove and Dover and played "dodge the cross channel ferry". I got seasick again and when stepping ashore in Ramsgate vowed to get the train back to Cowes and seriously reconsider my future. However, after a good night sleep proceeded by wholesome hot food, I was ready to go again. Oh, we did see a seal right inside Ramsgate harbour, he just seemed to have a look around and then head back out to sea, and I don't blame him - Ramsgate is a particularly grim looking place.

We set off back to Cowes the next morning at about 7:00am, had a "near miss" with another yacht during the night and arrived in time for breakfast at UKSA. I was in bed during the near miss but in the resulting post mortem it was discovered that we were showing completely the wrong navigation lights and the approaching yacht would have thought we were at anchor. Sailing at night is quite a strange sensation, especially if there is cloud cover or no moon. It can be incredibly hard to make out other vessels, determine what they are, work out which direction they are heading in with respect to us and how fast they are approaching or not as the case maybe. With recent incidents as sea you get a bit paranoid and when the sun does finally come up, it's like a blindfold has been taken off.

I'm thinking you may be getting bored reading these updates so I have produced a slideshow below which is a kind of collage of pictures from the first 7 weeks of the course. It's got backing music so if you are in an office turn your sound down, if not, turn it up - it's a magnificent song !!You may have to download some software to view it. If that's too much hassle go here to view: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-SnoBJ7NsU

Also, here's a video that I did on the catamaran. It's a bit shakey, I'm just experimenting with video - will do better next time. Here's the link if the embedded video doesn't work: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CdqaJbxkQ4U

The fire fighting was good fun, I have done a more extreme version of what we do on this course when I was in the Navy but it still gets the adrenaline going and I was a good deal fitter when I did it last time. The final exercise at the end of the two days is a live fire in a mock up of a house. You go in through a first floor door into a room that is already smoke logged - they light the fire and then leave it for half an hour. We then have to get all the hose and ourselves down a staircase which is a bit more illuminated (from the fire) but much hotter. At the bottom of the staircase the fire is within 6 feet of us through a door which is ajar. We have to pass it with the hose and go into the next room in order to attack the fire through a fully open door. This is where the instructor seems to make idle conversation about the fire whilst we're doing a "boil in the bag" impression. "It's hot isn't it" he says "come a bit closer and feel the heat increase, notice how the flames are licking around the door, and a bit closer", "yep, it's hot, now then, anyone else fancy a saunter back out?" I say. We all have a go at fighting the fire using different methods and take notice of the heat that is generated when water is used on the fire (steam is produced in huge quantities). Then it's back out the same way we came in but it's hotter (all that steam rising) and harder work getting the hose back up. We're only in there for about 20 minutes but everyone is covered in sweat and pretty tired at the end. Some people overcame the strange sensation of using breathing apparatus and only having a limited amount of air, some people overcame the perfectly natural fear of fire and operating in zero visibility, and we all enjoyed it. The professional fire fighters were very good and I think we all have a new understanding of the situations that they get called into for real.

Power boating was a magnificent couple of days, especially the second day when got to do some high speed stuff in the Solent. I had never been on fast "rib" - rigid inflatable boat. Hitting a wave at speed and taking off is full on boys stuff :)

We're making fast progress through the syllabus now, 7 weeks seems like such a short period of time on one hand but on the other I've learned more than I could have imagined beforehand. I'm already a Coastal Skipper, I've passed all the shore based exams required for Yachtmaster Offshore and I've passed something called STCW95 which is a qualification that is required to work commercially in the yachting industry. On Friday we've got 4 exams including an oral and practical with an external examiner which if I pass will qualify me to operate radio equipment on any size of vessel, anywhere in the world for general purpose communications, distress and search & rescue.

In amongst all the training we've also squeezed in one day off which I took as an opportunity to get off the island and go up to London to see Tricia. It wasn't until I got there that I realised I had been completely consumed by the course and getting slightly bogged down by it, so it was good to forget about sailing for 36 hours and get some bar hours in.

We start our third sea phase on Saturday, we've only got to do 2 more passages which will only take about 24 hours. We're probably going to get across to Cherbourg as we've been east and west so south is our only alternative (we could go north but we'd hit green hard stuff, otherwise known as terra firma after about a mile). So once we've done the passages its practice practice practice. Our man over board, mooring and anchoring drills need to be perfect by the end of this sea phase and we've also got to carry on learning pilotage in the Solent as well. The long summer seems to have officially ended so it's all going to get a tad chilly from now on - time to batten down the hatches and crack open the hot chocolate.

Exams, fog, a shark and more exams

Hi all. Well I've got loads of news and so it's a bit difficult to know where to start - I guess I should update this a bit more often. I'll start with a run down of what we got up to when we went to sea a few weeks ago.

The last time I updated this we were bound for Dartmouth late that night, however, the visibility deteriorated (this wasn't to be the last time that would happen in this trip as we'll see later), so we moored up outside Yarmouth on the Isle of Wight for night. Before that we practiced some night pilotage into Lymington (New Forest) on the other side of the Solent. It was fairly uneventful until we decided to stop for dinner which one of my crewmates had been preparing down below - spaghetti bolognese. We decided to pick up a mooring buoy whilst we all ate, we could see Isle of Wight car ferries passing extremely close to the yacht but knowing we were moored in the correct place we weren't worried - it's only a small channel so it's quite tight for room. We happily piled into dinner and then after about 10 minutes there was some commotion up top and what turned out to be fishermen shouting down something like "Oi, hello, anyone there" - it turned out we'd come free of the mooring, and drifted across the channel on the tide ending up probably no more than 10 yards from being aground. The guy that had tied us onto the mooring, no names, had been a tad "distracted" and we think the wake from the IOW ferries had caused us to come loose.

So the next morning we set off, passing The Needles at about 7:00am, which was picturesque, heading towards Dartmouth. The weather was great but what wind we had, was on our nose. Note to non sailors, it's impossible to sail directly into wind, you have to sort of zig zag your way towards it. This means, less progress and more work. It was a fairly uneventful passage, we had a very good skipper who would help us to understand theory work when there wasn't a great deal happening on deck. So we did some meteorology, navigation and collision regulations with him. Here's an arty picture of one of my crewmates (Chester) making a phone call on the bow as the sun went down.

We got to Dartmouth at about midnight but before getting there experienced some more fog, so the skipper did what's known as "blind pilotage". This is done by using very accurate chartwork and electronic navigational aids. I, however, was in bed having finished my watch at about 11pm. We only stayed in Dartmouth until about 5:30am the next morning, partially because our skipper was Scottish and, therefore, trying to avoid paying for berthing fees and partly because we needed to crack on with the journey. So we left what looked like a very charming place just as the light was coming up.

We then headed South towards a headland called Start Point. It was a very still morning, a bit misty and the sea was like glass. I was helming when we spotted a school of dolphins, they were playing in our wake and up ahead of our bow - as is their want. There is definitely something about seeing dolphins, sharks or whales that is first of all, capable of making us all children (no one can be all ambivalent when the shout of "dolphins" or "shark" comes from up on deck) and secondly, quite peaceful. The mist then became very dense fog with visibility down to about 30 metres - time for some more blind pilotage, except this time the fog was much worse and there was more chance of other traffic.

The first thing we did was get out our hand held fog horn as lovingly modeled by yours truly above. Our skipper, Gregor, then decided it would be a good time to instil confidence in his crew and get the yacht ready for "abandon ship" !! In the photo below the big bags on the left are called "grab bags" containing extra food, water and medical supplies. They are called grab bags because they are generally the last thing you can get your hands on before making a graceful departure from one's yacht and a crashing entry into one's liferaft. The yellow containers on the right with the red tops are the emergency flares for attracting the attention of other mariners and / or Search & Rescue. The guy helming, Alex, always seems to do so with one hand on his hip, more camp than a row of tents. Suffice to say we didn't need to cosy up in a liferaft but one of the things I did learn in the this sea phase was, things happen extremely quickly at sea. So it was good practice and if I ever get stuck in that kind of fog again I'll be much more relaxed and less paranoid about getting ready for the worst. Whilst we were feeling our way through the fog we did happen across two other boats heading towards us and with visibility down to less than 30 metres there really is very little time to react. Had they have been ships it's easy to see how collisions happen.

Anyway, by a process of heading towards land, watching the depth sounder (like a hawk) and following depth contour lines we eventually arrived at a place called Salcombe. The strange thing about sea fog is that no more than 1/4 mile inland, it was completely sunny and that would probably have been the same had we been 5 miles out to sea. Salcombe looks like a lovely place, photos below. I'd like to go back at some point and spend some time there.

We only stayed until the fog lifted and took the opportunity to get some pasties in the oven. Anyone reading this from Contessa Carolina will know that I am no stranger to the odd pasty. We sadly left Salcombe at about 3pm without even a sniff of lunch time beer at what looked like very quaint quayside pubs. We were heading west now towards Falmouth, past Plymouth and Fowey and Mevagissy. This was when we saw a shark, at first we thought Chester had just seen a floating bin bag but sure enough a big old basking shark it was. He was very docile and seemed completely at ease with us just a few yards away - the shark was quite chilled out as well.

As we went across Plymouth Bay we saw lots of warships playing war games in what I remember from my Navy days was called "The Wednesday War". I didn't take any photos having been on the inside fighting fires that didn't exist, stopping leaks that hadn't sprung, pretending to shoot down missiles that hadn't been fired at us and winning a war that never was. The rest of the lads enjoyed it and I was able to do my Uncle Albert, "during the war" impression.

I was on watch at about 1am when we arrived at Falmouth and I'm glad I was. Trying to distinguish between fishing boats, lighthouses, buoys, pilot boats and oil tankers at night, against the background lights on land is a lot harder than it might sound. The guy that I was on watch with, Ben, had spotted an array of lights that we really couldn't work out. But after some head scratching and noticing another light about 100 metres ahead of the others, and moving at the same speed, we identified it as a dirty great tanker. The first thing we did was say "goodness gracious old chap that seems to be a tad close and rather large", the second thing was to work out that it was actually heading away from us. We relaxed and carried on navigating our way into Falmouth but then in a heart stopping moment I noticed the tanker had turned and was heading straight at us. Time to get the skipper out of bed and to take avoiding action, we apologised to him for getting him out of bed, luckily his response was "rather be awake, than dead". We eventually tied up in Falmouth at 3:00am and put the boat to bed. I was skipper for the next day and made the hugely popular decision that we needed to be out of bed again at 6:30am. I should explain at this point, we had a permanent, fully qualified skipper but we all have to take turns at being responsible for navigation, passage planning, food, watch keeping systems, engine checks etc etc. It's a requirement that we all skipper boats at night and day in order to qualify for yachtmaster.

We awoke to another magnificent day, although we're all fairly bleary eyed by now, and headed back east. This was the longest single leg of the journey without pulling into a harbour, about 120 miles which translates to about 27 hours. It was a laid back day with people catching up on sleep, except me, but more about that later. Alex and Chester decided they wanted to go up the mast whilst at sea and with boat "heeled over" (leaning over on it's side with the sails up) - I would have but I quickly found something more pressing that needed my attention. The rest of the day passed without anything noteworthy happening. As the sun began to set the wind increased as forecasted and Mike, who was duty "mother" for the day prepared pizzas. What he hadn't worked out was that the small oven could only take one pizza at a time so it took him near on two hours to feed 6 people. Here's a pic of me at the helm at sunset.

I went to bed at about 11:00pm by which time the wind was up to about a force 6. Now my cabin was right in the bow of the boat and what with the sea state getting worse and the boat heeled over, I couldn't get a wink of sleep. It was like trying to sleep in a tumble drier strapped to a high speed ferris wheel . So I eventually decided to get up and get back up top. By this stage the wind was up to a good force 7, I'm exhausted (because I had very little sleep in the last 3 days) and as it tuned out dehydrated - it had been quite a warm day. On top of that I was now feeling sea sick. I had planned the passage so that we arrived at Portland Bill, near Weymouth just as the tide was due to turn at about 7:00am on the following morning, however, we arrived early. This meant that we had to spend about 5 hours getting bashed around, seeing Portland Bill but not being able to get anywhere near it.

When the tide finally did turn we were able to make progress, but we now had a bigger problem. Some of you will know that there is a "tidal race" at Portland Bill, which is an area of sea where tides combine and the sea bed has "overfalls". These overfalls are deep crevices on the sea bed that make the sea above rough. Even on a perfectly calm day when the sea is glassy smooth, overfalls will produce good sized waves. We also had a phenomenon called "wind over tide" which, as the name suggests, is when the tide is going one way and the wind the other. This also produces a choppy and confused sea. So, I'm v tired, dehydrated, sea sick and we've got the Portland Race, a force 8 by this time and wind over tide - not a happy chappie. It's easy to exaggerate at this point but the skipper said the waves were about 25 - 30ft in height, so I'll take his word for it. I had gone back down below by this point in an attempt to sleep in a different cabin - but failed. I would have paid an awful lot of money to step off at this point. It was a "stop the world I'm getting off" moment, with sense of humour absent without leave.

We finally made it into Weymouth at 10:30am, tied the boat up alongside, found a public house, had 2 pints and promptly flaked out for a good 16 hours of magnificent sleep interrupted only by the lure of fish & chips in the evening.

The next couple of days were spent returning to the Solent and then doing more pilotage, night and day into Wootton Creek (IOW), Beaulieu (New Forest), Southampton Water and Portsmouth. Things seem to happen whilst having dinner for some reason, and so there we were at the entrance to Southampton Water having another Spag Bol as I remember, when we were passed by Cunard's Queen Mary 2 - the largest British owned luxury liner you know !!

The sea phase finished and then we were back in the classroom for 3 days of exam prep and then two days of exams. I am happy to report that I passed them all and even got 99.5% in one of them. The exams were on navigation chartwork, tidal heights & tidal streams, collision regulations and meteorology. I had a spare 1/2 day after the last exam so I went over to the Southampton Boat Show and saw some "proper luxury". Now this is the sort of seaborne cooking facilities that I am aspiring to....it's on an 60 foot yacht.

That was two days ago and since then I've been doing First Aid. I have to admit that I wasn't really forward to this particular element of the course but I've really enjoyed it. Amongst other things I am now able to deliver a baby, take blood pressure, insert a drip, administer the correct drugs for Angina and file down the sharp bits on broken finger nails - so you are safe with me. I've got the exam tomorrow after which I will be in the "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing" club.

At the end of this week I've got Radar and something called Transas which involves sitting in a darkened room playing with.....simulators. We get to drive tankers, dredgers, warships etc etc in simulated weather conditions and frankly, I can't wait.

I'm back off to sea on Tuesday (26th Sept) for another 12 days. This time we've got 6 days on a 38ft Sigma yacht and then 6 days on a 40ft catamaran. After this sea phase we get to do some fun courses like power boating and keel boating (smaller racing boats).

So all in all, I am having an outstanding time with the odd, very brief, low moment but then I knew there would be times when it would be hard. I've learned so much in such a short period of time, I can't believe the course only started 4 weeks ago, it feels like at least 2 months already.

Hope everything is cool in the real world. Over and out.

First Sea Passage

Hi all. Really really quick update. Spent the last two days doing various safety briefs, "yacht familiarity" and power handling in harbour (parking basically). Tomorrow morning we are all going up the mast, just so that when we have to do it for real (due to there being a problem) it won't all be too alien. Now then, the weight is not exactly dropping off me, so I feel a tad sorry for the poor individual that has to winch me up there. The mast is quite substantial so I think it should be able to cope.

We are then off to sea to do some "man overboard" drills in the Solent en route to Yarmouth on the Isle of Wight. We'll stay there for the afternoon and wait for the tide to turn so that we can leave the Solent and get past the Needles with the tide behind us. Departure is planned for about 8pm and we're sailing through the night, arriving about 5 miles out from a place called Portland (near Weymouth) for the early hours of Tuesday morning. The tides here are notoriously treacherous so we have to arrive by 4am or we can't get through for another 6 hours in which case we may dive into Weymouth for kippers and tea. Having navigated Portland safely we're heading for Dartmouth in Devon for arrival some time on Tuesday. The rest of week is then Falmouth in Cornwall and hopefully the Scilly Isles (out past Land's End) before making our way back to the Solent for more pilotage. Our Yachtmaster practical exam is based in the Solent so we try to know every harbour, estuary and river inside out by January.

Anyway, have to go now, sorry for the shortness and lack of pics, just thought I would do a very quick update before leaving.

Hope all is well your end.

Navigation and more navigation

Hi all. Just a quick update before I go to sea for 2 weeks to do my first sea phase (of 5). First of all I'd like to draw your attention to a link on the right to the website of Miles Hilton-Barber. If you ever need some inspiration check out his website. He's a truly awesome man, blinded since his early 20's he's done some amazing things. He's about to fly solo from the UK to Australia in a microlight, he's conducted about 40 parachute jumps, attempted to walk to the South Pole, done all of the hardest marathons in the world including the 7 day Sahara one, driven a race car at 200mph around a race track and loads of other stuff. If you've got 5 minutes have a look at the short video on his website and if you've got 20 minutes have a look at the longer one. As well as being an incredible adventurer, he's also got a great attitude to life (as you might expect) and a sharp sense of humour. I've seen the videos a number of times and I still get a sense of drive after watching one.

Ok, enough about him. I've been doing navigation theory all week and I'm about to go to sea for 12 days to put it into practice as well as learn more practical aspects of sailing. The nav theory has been pretty intense, we've covered a lot in a week including estimating positions, course to steer, tidal streams and heights, secondary ports, interpolation, leeway, variation, deviation, electronic navigational aids, speed and course over the ground,....and more. That will make sense to the sailors out there and to land lovers, lets just say that "it messes with your head". We've also covered Meteorology this week, been tested on Rules of the Road (like the highway code for the sea) and covered Buoyage. So it's been a busy week and I'm looking forward to less theory and more rope pulling (that reminds me, I haven't read the knots book yet). During the shore phases I live in a single room which has an en-suite bathroom, tv and a view over the river. Here's the view (check out those Cirrus clouds, they mean that there is a warm front on it's way, which will be bring unsettled weather)

We've moved onto our boat which will be our home until mid September and I've taken some pictures to show you the luxury in which I'll be living. It's a 45 foot Elan which is bigger than I'm used to so for me it's relatively sumptuous. Here's a picture of the boat alongside the pontoon tonight.

Here's a picture of the chart table which I'll be sat at attempting to put my navigation into practice but wondering why the locals at Plymouth are all speaking French !!

Here's the galley, no doubt I'll be cooking up a storm here in the next few days whilst the lads "up top" deal with the storm outside.

If there is stormy weather, you may find me in here...

A view from below to the cockpit where I'll be attempting to helm the boat in a straight line and failing that, attempting to look cool whilst taking the scenic route.

And lastly, this is where I will be laying my weary head after a night watch

That's all for now, hope you are all well. In the words of Miles Hilton-Barber "life's too short for bad wine" so I'm off to find some good stuff.

3 Weeks of Holiday & Induction

I'm here !! I've had a magnificent 3 weeks since leaving work doing Cowes Week, a holiday in Greece and then Fowey Week (another sailing regatta in Cornwall). Cowes Week was manic, the racing is one thing but it's the drinking, late nights and sleeping in cramped yacht conditions (with 3 snoring blokes) that really take their toll. The boat that I raced on (Carolina) came 4th overall in it's class which was a surprisingly good result - we came 12th last year. It was a windy old week, two guys from our class were flown off their boats by helicopter after being hit by the boom (big metal thing, not big sound thing) and unfortunately one of our crew broke his finger in three places. I managed to escape with a hangover and a smile.







This is what Cowes + beer + sun + racing does to two, previously fit, upstanding members of the community !!






Naturally I needed a holiday after Cowes so off I went to Greece and more specifically an island called Skopolos. The weather, sea and food were all just what the doctor ordered and I also managed to read a couple of books in readiness for the course - Weather at Sea & Rules of the Road for Seamen, if you're interested. We stayed right in the main town with it's bustling little harbour which allowed me to do lots of boat spotting. I could be heard to say "oh that ferry just did 3 short blasts on it's horn, it's going astern" whilst sitting on the balcony sipping gin and tonic.

Fowey Week was "quaint" in every respect, the racing was much more chilled than Cowes, the town itself is very olde worlde and the atmosphere is more holiday like. The picture on the right is Fowey and I'd recommend a visit. The Red Arrows did a display which was awesome as usual. The unique thing about watching them at Fowey is that the town is surrounded by hills so everyone hikes up the top and the Red Arrows dive down into the town so for some of the time they are actually below you. It's traditional for the pilots to go to the Fowey Yacht Club for drinks afterwards. On hearing this all the women in our party said "oh, really" and were suddenly interested in dropping past at some point in the evening, however, on this occasion they had to fly off to another display - oh well girls !!



After the Red Arrows we had dinner in a quaint (told you) pub where the food was great but the chef seemed to put chilli in everything. Anyway, here's a picture of dinner and some of the people I sailed with. The first couple on the left are Annie & Vernon, two of the nicest people you could wish to sail with.




So now I'm at the UKSA (UK Sailing Academy), it's the second day at school and both days have been very laid back - lots of induction and tea but not much else. There's 15 of us doing the Ocean Graduate course and another 10 that are doing Inshore Yachtmaster, they'll be with us for the first 12 weeks. It's a very international mix with students from France, Mexico, Poland, Russia, the US, Finland and even the UK !! I'm at the "older end" of the age scale, most are in their early 20's or younger but there are a couple older than me. I've got the course programme now which consists of 12 days ashore in the classroom and then 12 days at sea up until the end of November. I then fly to Gibraltar to meet up with the yacht for my transatlantic passage which leaves on 30th November and arrives in Antigua on the 30th December, so that is going to be one rockin New Year !! I've got 4 days off whilst there before flying back to the UK for a month's worth of exams. The course is extremely intense, I've got one day off this Sunday, then one in October and one in November. This is supposed to be relaxing !!

That's it for now, I hope I haven't bored you too much !! Before I go, just one last picture of.......officially the cutest one year old niece in the world !!

Go Live

Hi,

This is where I am going to do my blog (which, for the sake of any readers over the age of 13, is an online diary). I'll start posting when I begin the course on 21st August.

I'm feeling increasingly excited, apprehensive, impatient to start, worried about little boats in big seas, but most importantly - HAPPY !!

When the course starts I'll be uploading diary entries and photo's (you lucky people). I'll try to make it mildy entertaining and interesting, but I'm more Janet & John than Satanic Verses !!

Now then, where's me parrot.