Started Sailing

Stevie Round

by Stephen Round
(Doncaster, UK)

I'm very much out of touch with sailing boats since I lived in the south of France on sailing and motor boats back in the early eighties. Back then, I once flew to Las Palmas hoping to hitch a lift to the Caribbean in the ARC to no avail. To this day, I've still got a passion to sail on the NE Trade winds in the arc. Now that I'm single and my children are grown up, I would love to make this passage. Before I take this challenge on, I must learn to sail and take my seamanship certification. After that maybe, I will buy a sloop and find a birth on the east coast as I'm from Doncaster. Then I'll spend some time doing it up, anti-fouling and so on.

Stevie i would love some information on sailing courses and makes of used boats so i take this challenge on and much more as the ARC for me would just be the start.

Comments for Stevie Round

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Jul 24, 2010

Atlantic sailing, no less...
by: Han

Hi Stevie,

It's quite a project you're planning, and that only for starters!
To start with your certifications: go through the list of UK sailing clubs under Sailing Directory on this site; Alex made it himself so it should be complete and all-embracing.
I can't possibly advice you on the make of boat to use. I'm a lover of the classic ship-types, and for any ocean my choice would be a Colin Archer type: not the fastest, but in my humble opinion the most seaworthy. And if I'd sail it single-handed, rig it as a schooner or a ketch, as the sail-area in those rigs is divided into smaller, easier to handle sails.
As an incurable romantic I'm sure that the boat will choose you instead of the other way around. Ships are women, as Cpt. Mal Reynolds described in "Serenity":
You know what the first rule of sailing is? ...Love. You can learn all the math in the 'verse, but you take a boat to the sea you don't love, she'll shake you off just as sure as
the turning of the worlds. Love keeps her going when she oughta fall down, tells you she's
hurting 'fore she keens.
Makes her a home.
(edited)
The best thing to do is to visit marina's, read reviews, look at the boats for sale, try them in rough seas, and DON'T buy before you're in love, because when you sign the purchase deed you marry her.
Hope to have given you a start,

Regards,

Han.

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