TripSailor.com® Sailing Blogs

Manu, one of the Indian members of my team, is over in the UK on a three month secondment. What can I show him of England that he might like to see? 

Well he is from Delhi so how about the sea? 

I look up the web-site of a company that I have used for weekend trips on the Solent ( http://www.oceanadventuressailing.com ) and find that they have two crew berths left for a very special weekend trip.

Once a year the Island Sailing Club in Cowes on the Isle of Wight organise what they claim to be the worlds largest yacht race (measured by the number of boats that are competing).

The course is fairly simple, start at Cowes and go anti-clockwise around the island which is about 50 miles.

They do pick a weekend with suitable tide times, i.e. with an ebb tide to take the fleet down to the Needles, and then eventually the flood will help you up the south coast of the island before you turn back into the Solent and head back to the finish at Cowes.

The Solent is the UK’s “home of yachting” so they do get a good number of boats registering for the race. In recent years that “good” number has been just over 1700!

A sea covered with spinnakers, will give him something to talk about when he goes home…

So I persuade Manu to join me on a sailing adventure, convincing him that you don’t actually need to know how to swim to go sailing.

When the day arrives, we leave the office in London after work, pick up the car and head down to the river Hamble to join the boat.