Here comes the sun …

On Sunday, I went on my first trip with the college yacht club. The sound of my alarm clock at 6 am was particularly cruel, but we had to drive down to Portsmouth to get the yacht and make the most of our day ahead. We sailed in the Solent, which is this bit of sea water between Portsmouth and the Isle of Wight. The weather gods obliged and although it was cold, the sun shined down on us gloriously the whole time. I joined the yacht club because a) I’ve always wanted to sail but I’ve never lived near the sea, and b) because I like getting out of London at the weekends, and c) to meet new people.

When I was a kid, we all had this thing called památník, which is Czech for something along the lines of “a book of memories”. It’s basically a pretty notebook where all your friends, teachers and family draw a picture for you and write a few nice words, so that you can look at it with nostalgia twenty years later and remember all your classmates from primary school. Often, people would use copy paper and copy out perfect pictures of Disney characters along with some sort of cheesy poem copied from somewhere. My dad did a pencil drawing of a yacht and wrote, “May you always have good wind in your sails, and may your ship always find its harbour.” And I loved that, because it was so him, and because he was wishing me freedom and good luck on my journeys. And I’m all about the journeys …

Back to the Sunday trip now …  Admittedly, I wasn’t the most hands-on member of the crew (because I’m always scared of screwing up), but I learnt a few bits and pieces about sailing: how to use the radio, what to do in a man overboard situation, a bit about the position of the sails, I pulled in the anchor (with a remote control, how lazy!), and they even let me have a go at the helm, which wasn’t as hard as one would think. I’m planning to try out more stuff next time.

I’ve very aware that this blog is supposed to be mostly about London, and lately I’m writing about all things not-London, but that’s just the way things are going right now.