I choose to do my RYA coastal skippers course with the hamble school of yachting on the south coast. This allows me to skipper a sailing yacht on coastal passages by day and night.

I met my instructor Rodger and the other crew in mercury harbour and after getting kited up we went to the boat. We started off with an introduction from Rodger to the course and what we can expect over the next few days, we then introduced ourselves and talked about our experiences so far. I was the only girl on board and must have been younger by about 20 years but it has to be said that it’s not unusual and I knew it wouldn’t matter once we got sailing. We began to explore the boat, familiarising ourselves with everything from the seacocks below to the ropes and rigging. Our instructor talked us threw the safety kit and electronics onboard.

By now it was time for lunch and while the others were cooking I was asked to prepare a passage to Lymington. I was a bit nervous to be thrown into the deep end without much time to prepare but I looked thew the almanac and calculated the tides before looking at the chart to plan our route. After we had food, one of the other sailors took charge to leave the pontoon. I navigated us out the hamble, and on the route, we pulled up to a marina to pick up a handheld radio. once out of the hamble we pulled our sails and felt the comfort that comes with turning the engine off and simple sailing. The wind was about a force 5 and out in the Solent it became quite choppy so we made the decision to instead head for Cowes, I went below and had another look at the chart. We headed east to avoid the Ryde shallows, then taked our way upwind to Cowes. on the way, our instructor threw a fender overboard and we and to recover it as if it were a person in the water, luckily I wasn’t at the helm at the time.

We made it safely into Cowes yacht haven, I discussed my relatively short passage and was told that my navigation was good and I keep the boat safe at all times, but I’d completely forgotten to keep a log. I knew where we were at all times and was keeping a mental note but hadn’t written anything down. A key part of skippering offshore passages is to monitor your journey so keeping a long can help especially if I were asleep below or in the worst case fallen overboard, the other crew can see where we’ve been and all the other important info.

On Tuesday we planned to sail from Cowes to Weymouth. I helmed at the begging and we raced another boat from Cowes to the needles. I loved it but was told that we were just cruising and I need to learn to slow down. Not take things so seriously, speed isn’t everything and there are more important things to me done, like making sure everyone had coffee and biscuits 😉 We got about halfway and decided to instead head for the pool, it took us 6 hours and we covered 36 miles. I liked the entrance to pool, there were plenty of boats around and the scenery was nice. I brought us alongside, in the entrance to the marina we passed Pip Hair’s boat Medallia. It took me a while to get used to manoeuvring the yacht in close quarters, you have to use a lot of revs so that water passes around the rudder and gives you steerage. I had to be a bit braver with the controls which took a bit of getting used to. Once alongside we went to the pub for fish and chips

On Wednesday, we sailed to Portsmouth going around the isle of wight. This was our longest passage by far, we left at 6am and arrived 6pm. And by the end mentions had run high and we’d begun to snap at each other. We had a great passage but were all pleased to get to bed.

Thursday, still near Portsmouth we practised boat handling skills. Picking up a man overboard, picking up a mooring bow to and stern to under sail and power. This was back to my comfort zone, I often thought seamanships skills like these in dinghies and didn’t find it too different. I picked up the man overboard perfectly the first time and didn’t do badly on the other skills. After a morning of boat handling, we sailed across to barton point on the isle of wight, where we anchored for a few hours. I was tasked with cooking dinner for the crew, anyone who knows me won’t be surprised to hear that this was the most difficult task of the week. I hated it and once the skipper had got to bed I enlisted some help. Eventually, it was over and we got to go sailing again.

We waited for dark so we could practise night navigation, using lights and compass bearings to find our position and avoid collisions with other vessels. To start with I was overconfident and made the exercise of finding an unlight position into a competition. It started off well, I took us to a known position and followed bearing to find my position. The trouble was the tide took me of course and I had planned to use a green light to confirm when I arrived at the position. This didn’t work as I got confused by the mass of everyday lights from the city behind. I knew I wasn’t where I was supposed to be so I took as back to my starting point to try again. Yet I had the same problem. To be honest, I got really upset, I felt like I had done everything else correctly but this simple thing I couldn’t do. It was hard, by this time it was 1am and I began to retreat back into myself, eventually, I gave up and someone else had a go. I sat back outside to keep a look out but couldn’t stop crying. I knew it didn’t really matter it was only an exercise on a course, but I felt like I’d failed. The instructor comforted me and I had another go, he helped me to plan it out and the second time around I found the position fairly quickly. we made it back to the harbour around 3am

Friday was the final day, we covered more boat handling skills. when we were moored up for lunch our instructor got a phone call from the school, one of the Yachtmaster exam candidates had dropped out and they needed someone to crew, I jumped straight in. We got back to the marina and thoroughly cleaned the boat before an individual debrief. We then signed our logbooks and received our certificates.