Living next to England’s largest reservoir (by surface area) AND not having too many weekends away planned was just too fortuitious a combination of circumstances to miss, so we decided that this autumn we would learn to sail dinghies. Not only would this be fun in its own right, but we also hoped it would help us with sail trim on yachts, and shore up (no pun intended) our general competence with boats and their behaviour.

So we booked a combined Level 1/2 course with the Rutland Sailing School based at Edith Weston, constituting four full days spread over two weekends. Our first day coincided with a national junior sailing event which saw an astonishing quantity of vans and Volvos converge on the sailing school car park. Escaping the chaos, we met our instructor Tony and headed out in a Laser Bahia to learn the basics. Although we were confused by various bits of rope that never get touched on yachts because nobody knows what they do, we made good progress and by the afternoon we were sufficiently practised at tacking and gybing to be allowed to move onto (deliberate) capsizing. This was surprisingly good fun, and not too cold.

Day two was cancelled owing to a comprehensive lack of wind, so we enjoyed an unexpectedly restful day of conker-collecting and picnicing at Burghley Deer Park. A fortnight later we reconvened after a hasty revision session – lots to remember, though I think some of it was beyond Level 2 (one of the hazards of learning to sail with an aero engineer is that things get complicated very quickly). A slightly windier day meant that it was easier to see the boat respond to things we did – ideal conditions for sailing round triangles, picking up buoys, “jetty bashing” and making ourselves dizzy via repeated circuits of floating pontoons. We spent the evening recovering in the rather nice Wheatsheaf pub in Oakham, where they have two log fires and very tasty chips.

On the morning of the final day we were sent out in the Bahia to fend for ourselves, while Tony laughed at us from the comfort of a launch. It was windy enough for a reef in the main sail, and we had some fun zooming back and forth across the lake before tackling a triangular course. We successfully negotiated the gybes but twice fell foul of gusts that tipped us up when we failed to respond to them quickly enough. But we got significantly wetter after lunch, when we tried out a couple of single-handers – a Laser Pico for me and an RS Q’ba for Dave. Conclusion: great fun, but more practice needed – we only got a short way up what I suspect is a very steep learning curve! For the final session of the course we were back in the Bahia, defying the safety boat, which wanted us to go home (but it was only 3.30!), and doing timed laps around yet another triangle. Once we’d got our making tacks and laylines sorted, our times were remarkably close. It’s always the crew’s fault, anyway…

We are now apparently deemed competent enough to hire boats from the sailing club, so are looking forward to some more capsizing practice in the near future, as well as hopefully trying out some dinghy tactics in the yacht.