Every day's a school day

Thirsting for Day Skipper Practical knowledge, sea-schools appear curiously unavailable

- Dave Selby

Sailing is by far the easiest part of sailing. Once you’ve allowed for deviation, variation, tide, leeway and innumerable other factors such as psychotic skippers like Captain Ahab and neurotic crew like Fletcher Christian, it is in theory possible that – by means of waggling the tiller to and fro and pulling in various ropes and letting them out again – you may, with a little luck, arrive at your destination. Or somewhere similar.

If on the other hand, and through no fault of your own such as faulty dividers, a coffee stain on a chart, melting a plastic spatula while frying eggs (in other words doing exactly what you’ve been told to do, ie making breakfast) you end up being pounded to pieces at the foot of a 200ft cliff on a lee shore, all is not lost – unless it’s your own boat.