Sailing by Tom Morrice
It looked fun I thought to myself. I wanted to try it out. I was ten and a bit. At that time I was obsessed with water sports. Speed boats, sailing boats, kayaks: you’d name it and I would talk about it for hours. The fact was that I had never tried it. The people at the local sailing club made it look so easy and fun. I had always loved the way boats glided across the water.
It was my time to shine. I was at the sailing club when I got the offer to go sailing. Of course, I replied with a positive answer. I was looking at all the other people launching their boats into the water and sailing off when I got asked. I was provided with all the gear and a boat all I had to get was my mums go ahead. She agreed. I was over the moon!
There was wind: not to much but not too little. My boat was rigged. I was rigged. I was ready to go. I felt shaky and nervous as I was launching. My boat was in the water and so was I. I thought the water would be warm considering it was summer but it was freezing. I got the rudder and centreboard down in to the water and then I got in to the boat. I pulled the rope that pulled the sail in to stop it flapping. The boat started to lean to one side as the wind was hitting the sail. I tried to counter balance the boat by sitting up on the opposite side to the sail. I was terrified of capsizing when the boat leaned over. I don’t know why I was terrified of capsizing when all it consisted of was the sail falling in to the water and me also.
The rest of the boats out that day were in a club race. I was told no to get in the other boats way. I was quite far out when I decided to turn round and head back to the boating club. When you turn the boat around you are suppose to let the sail out a bit and steer the boat so it goes round so it’s heading the other way. Once it’s turned round you have to get to the other side quickly. The mistakes I had made were I didn’t get to the other side quickly enough and I didn’t let my sail out. Next thing I knew I was in the water and so was the sail.
I knew I had to do something. I can remember not knowing much about getting a capsized boat up, I was climbing on to the centreboard when the rescue boat was speeding towards me and the capsized boat. The guy in the rescue boat was telling me to try and get on top of the centreboard and pull the boat up. I pulled it up, I felt relieved. It was when I was climbing back in to the boat it capsized on top of me. I gave it another try at trying to get the boat back up.
With the rescue boat at the scene it made it more and more scary. I don’t know why it was called a rescue boat when all it did was make things worse. My hands where shaking. I was shaking and I wasn’t even cold. I thought I had done some big damage to the boat but all I had done was get the sail wet. I gave the “trying to right the boat” another go. I remember I got the boat up right again and in working order. That was when I tried to get into it but this time my life jacket was stopping me. It was getting caught on the plastic side of the boat.
After a while I gave up the challenge of “righting” the boat. The guy in the rescue boat said to leave the boat and swim to him. He pulled hard on my lifejacket and I was hauled in to the rescue boat. I remember speeding into the pier and I remember looking back at the capsized boat in the middle of the Tay. I was instructed to go in to the club house, have a shower and get changed. I remember jumping in to the shower. It was too cold at first then it warmed up then it was too hot.
By the time I was showered and changed I went out of the club house and my boat was sitting on the wet concrete outside the clubhouse. I began to de-rig it with the rescue boat guy. He said that I needed practice and I could not agree more.
