TripSailor.com® Sailing Blogs

We have just spent a fantastic week in Turkey and have come away with a wealth of experience. We flew out to Dalaman and were transfered to a flottilla in Fethiye. Our boat was called Sauntere and was a 34.3 Oceanis, this week turned out to be a whole new learning experience.  Our lead boat which had the skipper, Allen, his wife, the hostess, Kristin and the engineer, Tom.  They were fantastic and worked non stop to make sure everyone had a brilliant time as well as teaching us as much as they can as well as making it a wonderful holiday.  But mistakes!!!  Yes there were a few, to say the least, from coming in to mooring with the yacht set up wrong, to losing a fender over board in the heart of a busy harbour, to learning that just when you are sailing and everything seems to going right, the wind drops and you have to come up with a different plan.  One day we were sailing and we felt we had this down to a fine art, when we were doing just over 7 knots, everything felt good, then there was a small island in front of us, which we had to negotiate around. Still under sail, there were 2 other yachts doing the same route and they didn’t seem to have the problem we had, we changed tack, we landed pulling in the genoa, heading in a different direction, this went on until the yachts that were along side us were mere specks on the horizon, we still had this small island sitting in front of us!! In frustration we finally put the engine on, got round the island turned off the engine and  started sailing again.  Later that evening, Richard was speaking to one of the yachts that was on our same route, for him to say, “No they were not sailing, it was all under motor!!”  Now we know why we couldn’t sail it!  For those of you who are very experienced sailors, as you can see this is not going to be a blog for the serious seaman, more like a calamity of errors at sea!!    

At the end of the week we had a raggata and we came a credible 4th, so we feel that we are making head way.  - Tracey

When we first started this exercise, we had the idea that we would look to buy a boat in the caribbean and then sail in that area for the British winter and then come back to the UK, just as the grass was beginning to grow and it was getting warmer. Now because we are planing on leaving in March, we are now thinking on the line of heading for the Med, so either buying a boat in the UK or the Med. This has led on to the idea that maybe we might have enough experience at the end of November to sail the atlantic to the Caribbean ourselves.  I am sure this is a bit ambitious, but we can dream.   So we have gone from sailing just for 6 months at a time, to sailing full time.  I guess we will just have to see where we end up………..Tracey

Went to the Cla game fair, which we do every year, but we are so engrossed in sailing that we no longer found the day as interesting as we usually do, well apart from the pimms tent in the members enclosure.  That never fails to disappoint.  While we were there we got talking to a couple of people and one man who is a regular sailor was telling Richard how wonderful his boat is.  I appreciate that what ever boat you have it will be the best boat, anyway his was an Island Packet, we had a look on the net when we came home and they do look nice, though Richard has all of a sudden become drawn to the Sun Odysey, Around a 45 fter, the other gentleman we were speaking to was raving about a Southerly,  If anyone has any views, we would love to hear them.  We are after a comfortable yacht, as we will be living on it 24/7, so feel it will have to be an owners version, not a charter spec.

Tracey 7th July 2010

Tracey 28th June 2010

As neither of us have not done any sailing we felt it was time to take the plunge.  We have enrolled ourselves on a course in Portsmouth for 3 days which will also give us enough experience for us to join a flottilla later in July.  To say we had no idea what we were letting ourselves in for was an under statement.  Never the less, true to form we dived in with all our energy and had a brilliant weekend.  There were 6 of us plus the instructor on a Oceanis 37ft.  We (as usual) knew less than everyone else.  We had a couple that had been on 2 other flottilla’s before and just wanted a refresher course, and 2 young guys who worked for Sailing today who were doing an article for the magazine and then there was Richard & I.  Though we were learning all the time and had a wonderful weekend, nice warm weather and our skipper was extremely helpful and very tolerant of us.  We are now faced with the dilemma of what boat to buy!!  Everyone has a different view.  Not to mention where are we going to sail………….  We finished early on Sunday to watch the world cup and even England losing couldn’t dampen our spirits after our first weekend of sailing.  So now it is full steam ahead……What boat to buy