Becoming a boat owner

Scott Opie buys a £1,300 trailer-sailer and discovers the ups and downs of sailing

I hadn’t been in control of a boat since I was 16 years old. Sure, that’s not really true. We hired a tinny on the Sunshine Coast with the view to catching a fish.

Fortunately, no fish were harmed in the practicality of that adventure. We also bought a second-hand kayak and put it on our jetty. “Have a look at our new boat,” I would say to anybody who dropped by. “It’s the green one”. They were always disappointed. I traded the kayak about a year later for a mountain bike. That remains largely unused too.

But one day it occurred to me that the thing that I had been looking for was sailing. I remember waking up one morning and just knew. I considered buying a boat but that involved spending a huge sum of cash for a ‘hobby’. Not my first and natural instinct. Lessons on how to sail? Yep, that felt right.

I enrolled on two-day sailing course, from theory and sailing a Laser on day one to crewing a 22-footer on day two. I put on my bravest face, but the loud snapping of the Mylar mainsail after hoisting filled me with fear. It sounded so aggressive! And how did you stop it again?

Our instructor, who was patient to a tee, covered off the basics for the bigger boat; teamwork, reefing, crewing roles and capsizing (so that was possible, right?). And the knife taped to the tiller is for what? To cut myself loose if I’m trapped under the boat and tangled in a web of ropes... or lines... or sheets. Not to mention the difference between turning one way and the other. One is a tack, the other might take off the top of your head.