The Journey Begins – Learning to Sail at 65+

 The Journey Begins – Learning to Sail at 65+

Many people have the chance to learn sailing at a young age, but I wasn’t one of them, even though I spent the first 30 years of my life living by the sea. My Dad was a sailor in his youth, and his idea of a boat was an aircraft carrier. My youngest son, Paul, did his Duke of Edinburgh Gold Award, and part of this was learning a new skill. He decided to sail. Then he went off to University in Kingston and joined the Thames Sailing Club. They took him under their wing, and soon he was out sailing in Thames A-Raters. He then had a year out in Perth, Australia, where he did a bit more sailing.

After leaving University, he found there was a hole in his life. Paul persuaded my wife and me to go sailing with him, so we hired a Xenon for a morning and took it out on the reservoir. We had no idea what we were doing, but enjoyed it. We talked about boats a lot and went down to the Upper Thames Sailing club, where Paul had raced A-Rater for the Bourne End Week, to watch all these dinghies race. 

It looked like fun. 

So we went down to the Southampton International Boat Show to have a look at some boats. We tried loads. In the pouring rain, we sat in most of the dinghies and talked to all the reps. Which boat would be for us? We looked at fusions, and Wayfarers and Xenons and so many others. Eventually we got to the RS stand and found a boat that Paul 6ft 4 could easily fit in - an RS Toura.

Over the next few days, we discussed all the boats and eventually decided on the RS Toura, which we bought. Now we had to find somewhere to store it and sail it. UTSC was the obvious choice, so we joined and had a shrink-wrapped boat delivered there.

The rest is in the blog, How I learnt to sail and started to improve and started to enjoy getting on the water.

https://pmrsailing.uk/Philips-Blog/Soton-Boat-Show.html