Dreams that stay in the head too long may never come to fruition if you don’t take the leap and engage that first active step. We have a dream of buying a sailboat and setting off on wind-powered adventures, so after months of binge-watching sailing youtube channels like Sailing La Vagabonde, Sailing Uma, Sailing Learning by Doing, and of course, Sailing SV Delos, on top of diving into sailing books like Liz Clark’s Swell, we finally took that first step and went out for a family sailing lesson. I was nervous for one reason only: would the family get seasick and hate sailing and thus I’d end up becoming a solo sailing mum? Thankfully that was not the case, and as I intuitively predicted, we all bloody loved it!
It took me most of this year to find a bilingual sailing coach, but Damien was well worth the wait. Based down in the southwest of France, the Baie de Chingoudy borders Spain and is where we met Damien and his Sunfast 37. With cloudy skies and plenty of wind, Damien had me behind the wheel in the cockpit and Remy up on deck handling the lines and hoisting the mainsail in no time. Once the wind filled our sails we were out into the open ocean and the feeling of pure freedom and joy became so strong you could barely wipe the smiles off our faces.
Damien taught Remy and I to work as a team to tack, sail windward, downwind, and trim the sails to gain speed or stabilize the boat. Ryder listened to every word and was soon to remind us if we’d missed a step, while Hunter snuck off into the cabin to take selfies and check out the interior design. I felt most natural at the helm and Remy’s strength and natural ability with the lines showed as he quickly took like a duck to water jibing and trimming the sails. We switched roles though, as it’s important for both of us that we become competent sailors and co-captains, and considering we plan to do some big adventures offshore in the future we both need to be able to learn each-other’s roles in case one gets sick or injured and the other has to solo handle the boat to shore.
I navigated us back to the dock where Remy again showed off his beginner’s (luck?) skills with the lines and after thanking Damien and assuring him we’d be back for some more professionally lessons, we hopped on a boat taxi over to Spain to celebrate our accomplishment with a cold beer and ice cream.
There are many different paths into sailing and we’ve heard many stories of beginner’s learning off youtube and in many ways we were well prepared for our first lesson thanks to all the vlogs we soaked up during covid confinement, but being surfers and having grown up in strong oceans - myself in South Australia and Remy in West Africa and the Atlantic Coast of France - plus having a family, Remy and I definitely want to invest in a decent chunk of professional coaching hours before we hop on our own boat down the track. I’m currently looking to go up to Bretagne later this year to complete my RYA certificate, and Remy’s recently met a salty old sea dog Jac and is currently negotiating a bit of a deck-scrubbing-for-sailing-lessons kind of deal. More to come on that!
Our little family is currently preparing for our next big adventure: creating a Floating Stories Lab, a regenerative sailboat research & discovery studio
Our goal is to buy a secondhand sailboat and refit her for autonomous, sustainable, and eventually regenerative blue water cruising. This vessel will become our home, our work and learning lab, and mode of voyage, from which we will facilitate stories, knowledge exchange, and connections to effect more hopeful futures.
Limitations will encourage adaptations. Problems will inspire solutions. Our explorations and discoveries will influence our perspectives.
