Fun on water

Lessons in sail training inspiration

- Sam Llewellyn

Obviously all sensible boat people want to get the children off the screens and on to the water. This is a hard task when it seems there is a tendency for some children not to like sailing.

This may be in case they get their phones wet; or perhaps because the authorities have managed to separate the idea of sailing from the idea of fun.

It is true that learning to sail is often associated with excess moisture, some of it unwarm.

Sailing is also associated with big money. The excess moisture can be fixed with a decent wetsuit and a sensible choice of weather.

As for money, highly acceptable sailing can be done in a Topper or a Mirror dinghy, available on ebay for sums not unadjacent to three hundred quid.

The object of boats is freedom; and to the impartial eye an obsessive clambering, by some, up the RYA greasy pole towards a ghostly Olympic stardom looks like the opposite.

The French did it differently. I was a badly behaved 16-year-old. My parents, perhaps seeking a penal colony equivalent to Devil's Island where my character could be reformed and my fluency increased, discussed the matter with some friends who had been in the French Resistance.