and then...

A whole week of messing about in boats! I was so excited!

My friends would be surprised to hear this, but at 11 years old, I was pretty quiet, so it was no wonder then that I managed to bypass the kit allocation unnoticed, and it wasn't until I had been out on the water for a few hours and was starting to go blue, that one of the instructors thought I ought to go back to the shore.

They took me home where my mum stuck me under a hot shower, filled me with mugs of hot chocolate and threw me back out to go sailing again. Some might think that was a little harsh, but if she hadn't done that, then I doubt that I would have gotten back on the horse so to speak.

That afternoon, now wrapped up in the spray trousers and jacket, I mastered the controls of my Oppie [International Optimist Dinghy] and I was hooked.

By the end of the week I had passed my Level 1 Certificate and was as keen as mustard to carry on. My wonderful parents indulged my new passion and paid for me to carry on for a further week in order to complete Level 2 which I passed with flying colours.

At the end of the second week, my parents had a visit from the owner of the sailing school who said that I had displayed a natural talent out on the water and they wanted to offer me the chance to complete the Third certificate in the group. They offered me another week, on the house which delighted me immensely.

In the beginning...

I started sailing when I was eleven years old, although some kids, like my boyfriend for example, start even younger than that.

My parents were working for the year in Poole, on the Dorset Coast and we were living in Hamworthy which is on the outskirts of the town and situated in the safe waters of Poole Harbour.

Every morning I would watch the brightly coloured sails of little sailing boats set off from Rockley Point, across to Sandbanks on the opposite shore before returning home in the afternoon, and sometimes I would walk down to the sailing school at Rockley Point to watch the children as they brought their boats up the slipway and then packed them away.

It looked like great fun and I loved swimming in the sea, so I could only dream about what it would be like to go with them one day. I didn't need to wait long... my parents had noticed me gazing out the window every morning and they surprised me with a weeks sailing course at the same sailing school.