17th April, 2009

I know that most of you presumed you would not be hearing from me again as I headed off to the Caribbean for my sailing holiday a couple of weeks ago with little more than a cursory glance at a sailing manual before taking my first command of a yacht, a 43 foot catamaran. If you send this on to my yacht charter company I will deny every word, but it just might be that we did have one small incident involving a dead coral reef. Important to stress that it was dead coral because it seemed to me that the only concerns my crew had, as we grounded and bounced up and down on the reef, were environmental. I was very unlucky actually. Noone could have expected such a sudden shallowing at least twenty yards from a lovely white beach I was trying to nestle up to for the afternoon. I asked Sophie to jump into the sea for a moment or two whilst I sorted matters out, plunged the two throttles hard into reverse and with the help of a large wave which just happened to coincide with Sophiefs departure, off we bobbed with not a scratch. Interesting sequel actually. I was ribbed mercilessly by my brother and another friend who was sailing alongside, so my defence I ventured the opinion that you couldn't count yourself a real seaman until you had been on a reef. Indeed I bet my brother that he would have to down two large Painkillers if a guy we were meeting up with for a drink at lunch the following day, who has sailed around the world and crossed the Atlantic on numerous occasions, admitted to having run aground at least once in his long sailing career. My brother, who really doesnft handle his drink particularly well as Martin Currie folk reading this will attest to, took the bet. And so the next day over a couple of beers with my new yachtie friend, after having confessed my own crass error, I got straight to the point. Joy of joys. This delightful man, who I was meeting for the first time, as I have said, a massively experienced navigator and yachtsmen, although slightly bemused by my presumptuousness, admitted to having grounded his boat not once but twice - albeit under slightly more strenuous and testing circumstances than mine (details of which I will share on request with those aficionados amongst you). So it was that our three boats set sail later that afternoon on the short trip from Sopers Hole to Joost Van Dyke, with me, confidence renewed, leading the way and my brother, heavily under the influence of Pusser's Dark Rum, jibbering rubbish over Channel 20A on our VHF radio's.