Four quiet anchorages within an hour of Pier 6
Where to drop the hook for lunch and a swim on a day boat, and which one to choose for
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Most people arrive for First Sail expecting a classroom. There is a whiteboard, and we use it for ten minutes. By eleven o’clock you are on the water, and by lunch you have been in it.
This is what the first day of our three-day course looks like, hour by hour, so that you know exactly what you are signing up for. It is written from the instructor's side of the launch, because that is where I spend my Fridays.
Coffee at the dock office, a buoyancy aid that fits, and a walk down the slip to the dinghies. Before anyone touches a rope, we spend twenty minutes on the three things that keep you safe: the buoyancy aid stays on, you stay with the boat, and the instructor in the launch is never more than a shout away.
Then we rig. Three students to a boat, one mast, one boom, two sails. Everyone ties the knots they practised at home, and everyone gets one wrong. That is the point of the morning.
From above, the creek is smaller than it feels at the tiller: half a mile from Pier 6 to the bridge.
We sail on a reach first, with the wind across the boat, because it is the most forgiving point of sail. You steer, the person beside you trims the jib, and the third person watches the water for gusts. Every ten minutes you swap seats.
“Nobody is a natural on the first morning. By the third afternoon, everybody is.”
Most groups make three or four trips across the creek before anyone tacks on purpose. The first tack is always a little late and a little loud. The second one is fine.
Before lunch, every student capsizes a dinghy in the creek, on purpose, with an instructor beside them. You learn that the boat floats, that it rights with your weight on the centreboard, and that the water in October is cold but not that cold. People who dread this part usually say afterwards it was the best part of the day.
Lunch is on the clubhouse deck, and then we go out again with the points of sail drawn on the whiteboard still fresh. The afternoon is for reaching back and forth, a first go at gybing, and coming alongside the dock under sail. At half past four we tie up, coil the lines and practise the bowline one more time.
Day two is tacking, gybing and a man overboard drill. Day three is your first solo hour. But that is another post.
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