The Stirring Adventures of Bosun Heptinstall by Simon Heptinstall

It wasn’t long before the skipper asked me to take the wheel. Proudly I stood at the helm and did my best to steer our yacht through the channel marked by bobbing green and red buoys.

With the wind in my hair, the spray in my face and my cold hands on the huge upright wheel, I suddenly saw myself in a whole new light. Not the old Simon Heptinstall, lifelong land-lubber, worrying about seasickness in a Jacuzzi bath or feeling queasy driving over the Severn Bridge. No, here was the new ‘Bosun Heptinstall’, trusty helmsman, salty sea dog and intrepid adventurer of the high seas.

Even though in reality we were a boat load of beginners just leaving Portsmouth marina to learn the basics of sailing, my mind drifted away into a whole new potential future. In my imagination I was heroically manhandling the helm as we arrived in a beautiful Caribbean bay after an arduous Atlantic crossing. I was just about to acknowledge the cheery waves of the sultry local girls when I was jerked back to reality by the skipper.

“Look where you’re going or you’ll hit that mud flat,” he shouted. Everyone laughed. Oh well, perhaps I still have a little way to go... but perhaps this was the start of something big. For I had joined a course run by leading sailing school Sunsail called ‘Competent Crew’. It’s the first step in the Royal Yachting Association’s official sailing training system.

The five-day course teaches basic seamanship to beginners like me with no experience and turns them into “useful crew members.” This means covering an impressive syllabus ranging from learning to tie nine different knots to being able to hoist the mainsail. The skipper points out all the parts of the yacht and its rigging, and how the boat works as a complicated machine to utilise the wind to make progress. I soon was taught that taking the helm is very different to steering a car – the wind direction, currents and tides can all affect the boat’s response to the rudder.

This basic course teaches how a boat must tack or zig-zag in order to sail towards the wind and how the crew must tighten and loosen the ropes holding sails in position at each twist and turn of tacking. This gives you your first taste of controlling the yacht’s progress simply by managing the way the wind hits the sails.

I suddenly realised the eternal sensation of freedom that all sailors must feel – there’s no engine or fuel to rely on, simply the wind. Your power is free, readily available and all you’ve got to do is harness it and the world’s oceans are out there waiting.

If you catch the sailing bug after the Competent Crew course, the next rungs on the RYA ladder are the “Day Skipper’, ‘Watch Leader’ and ‘Coastal Skipper’ courses. Eventually the diligent sailing student can reach the ultimate level of ‘Ocean Yachtmaster’. To even embark on this course you have to have sailed on a non-stop journey of 600 miles, been at sea continuously for 96 hours and hold radio operator’s and first aid certificates. If you pass the extensive written, oral and practical exams you are “competent to skipper a yacht on passages of any length in all parts of the world.”

As I felt the exhilaration of the wind filling the sails and speeding us across a choppy Solent, becoming a seasoned ocean-going captain was starting to sound a rather attractive proposition. I realised I might have to put my attempt at Ocean Yachtmaster on hold however, while I grappled with a few slightly more basic points. Like what on earth was the skipper talking about?

It seems that right from the start the trainee sailor needs to learn a new language of seafaring, with conversations peppered with words like leeward, cleat and halyard. I discovered that this language of the sea even has its own pronunciation: gunwale is gunnel, rowlock is rollock and forecastle is fo’csle. You even have to say phrases like ‘abaft the beam’, ‘stand by to gybe’ and ‘ready about’ outloud without putting on a silly Long John Silver voice.

Yet as I started using this language that I’d only heard spoken in films I started to feel some of the romance of sailing rubbing off on me too. No wonder it is at this first stage that so many get hooked on sailing.

Sunsail offer a wide range of RYA training courses of different lengths and levels at their bases in Portsmouth, Plymouth, Largs in Scotland and The Canary Islands. There are also opportunities for more leisurely cruises and sailing weekends too. And the price of buying into the nautical dream is not great. Places on the five-day Competent Crew course cost from £255 each.

Our skipper for my first training voyage was dentist Colm Cleary (correct) who had started his sailing career on the same Competent Crew course. A long list of qualifications and half a lifetime later Colm now spends all his spare time and holidays afloat.

So even if you start off jerkily tacking around the Solent for a weekend you can end up weighing anchor in a Pacific island paradise. For many it becomes a life-changing obsession – with the goal being your own yacht and the freedom of the seas. “Sailing is far more than just another hobby,” said Colm staring wistfully away towards the white-crested waves. “It’s difficult to explain... it’s about the lifestyle, the social life and the people.”

On board the 32-foot Sunsail yacht fellow crew man Nick Tomlinson, a young lawyer from London, was a complete beginner like me. Unlike me he seemed to grasp the essentials pretty fast. He’d soon learnt how to do something to the mainsail that I didn’t understand and proved to be an expert in the galley too. And Nick demonstrated his mastery of the social aspect of sailing too. As soon as we’d tied up in Cowes marina after a stormy crossing of the Solent, he was the first to ask: “Who’s coming down the pub then?”