Pete Baker’s Blog

Has my first taste, today, of the Laser dinghy. I’ve been itching to have a proper go at one of these for a while, but the winter weather has never been quite calm enough to risk taking one out – after all, in stronger wind, if you make a mistake in one of these things, you can find yourself catapulted into the water rather quickly. And yes, I mean catapulted, I have seen it happen to people, flailing arms and legs and all!!

Last year I had a couple of goes of the class underneath the Laser Standard – the Laser Pico. It’s basically a totally different boat, but the design principle and handling characteristics are very similar – a simple, tough, performance design, and sh*t loads of fun. Unfortunately, the Pico was really designed with children in mind, so me, being 13 stone and 5 foot 10, found the cockpit rather cramped. I also cultivated a rather nice collection of bumps on my head, due to the over-affectionate and extremely low boom, and a bit of a twisted knee, due to the various gymnastics I was performing to avoid cranial contact with aforementioned extremely low boom.

So I was very happy today to wake up to a bright, warm day, and a nice ‘calm but not too calm’ Beaufort Force 3, perfect for learning how not to drown myself capsizing a full Standard Laser! I got some brief instruction on how to rig one of the club Lasers (dead simple!), and with a bit of trepidation, off I set.

So basically, the Laser Standard is probably the most fun and simultaneously the simplest boat I have ever sailed. It is just awesome. It accelerates very quickly, has very responsive handling, and all the controls are in totally the right place. The wind was just strong enough to get the old adrenalin flowing, but not too strong to be totally scary.

Some of the guys at the club have set up a ‘Winter Racing’ series, so I took part in a couple of races, and yes I was pretty bad, but towards the end of the session I had improved a lot. I think that racing is probably the best way to improve your sailing skills and increase familiarity with the boat, simply because you can watch what everyone else is doing, what lines they are taking, how they have set their sails, and how they handle the controls, and then try to copy them. If you can handle the humiliation of coming last a few times, that is!

Anyway, overall pretty amazing for a 37 year old design! On top of all this, you can buy second hand Lasers normally for less than a grand. Seriously thinking about buying one of my own now, but I’d have to investigate storage in one of the boatyards near Millwall Dock.

I’ve just spent the last weekend getting my RYA Level 2 sailing certification at the DSWC on Millwall Dock. It’s been a top weekend, whizzing around the dock doing various exercises – man overboard, mooring, following a course around bouys, follow the leader.. having to do my capsize drill again for the first time in about 8 years was a bit of a shock – b**dy hell Thames water is COLDD!! Also, the wind was gusting to god knows how many mph, so that was making things pretty interesting… a couple of the other students turned their boats turtle (i.e. capsized right over), which was fun to watch. Bit scary if the boat lands on top of you, though, I guess.

The course has got me all charged up about sailing again for the first time in about 15 years… and now I’m looking at getting into dinghy racing and having a go at a Pico or a Laser. Working up to skiff sailing, you see, in my dreams ha ha ha.

I’m also still thinking about getting more big boat experience – and possibly doing the RYA Day Skipper and Yachtmaster certifications. They do these at Docklands, but I’ve been told that it may just be easier (and more fun) to head down to the Solent and do the course in a week at one of the sailing schools down there. There’s plenty of well established schools round Port Solent and Southampton, like Sunsail. Talking with some of the people down at Docklands, it’s also apparently generally quite easy to get to be crew on random boats out of the Solent if you just head down there and hang around the docks a bit (especially during a big event like Cowes). A nice cheap way of getting bigger boat experience, though goes without saying you’re going to have to work for it.

It’s been a couple of years since Ed introduced me to the concept of sailing in London… no, not on the Thames, but in the old Millwall Dock, formerly the hub of the British trade empire, now home to skyscrapers, executive flats, and last but not least the DSWC, a rather cool not-for-profit trust-owned community sailing and watersports centre. I can’t emphasise what a great place this is – it’s basically non-exclusive, open to all ages and walks of life and funded by the trust and (I think) grant money. They also get local kids involved in the centre through their Youth Afloat program, so it’s really community facing.

But the real reason I go there is for the Twilight Sailing, which runs every Wednesday night over the summer. It’s an idea nicked from the Aussies – basically, you are all supposed to whizz round a sailing race course, downing a tinnie for each marker bouy you pass. This continues until sundown, at which point, in typical Aussie style, you all dock your boats and go have a massive barbie and get even more wankered.

Sadly, the public waterways laws over here are a bit stricter than they are in Oz, so instead of drinking out on the water, you just race your boats until sundown, then rush to the barbie and get pissed really quickly before closing, which is more the British style.

Still, it’s pretty cool sailing a boat on this massive dock, surrounded by the Canary Wharf towers and various other skyscrapers, as the sun sets behind the buildings, and you scramble to control the boat as another insane gust of wind nearly capsizes you. Yes, the presence of all those tall buildings makes for some very interesting wind patterns. Last night, me Ian and Chloe really thought we were going in the drink at several points….

Needless to say, the barbie is bloody excellent as well. And all this for 20 quid! It really is a great experience, and not the kind of thing you expect to be able to do in ole landlocked London.

I am now thinking of joining, and finally getting round to doing my RYA-1 and RYA-2 qualifications (been sailing since I was 11 without any qualifications at all!). They also do tidal / river sailing training, and the big Yachting qualifications as well.

However, I think ultimately I want to be able to learn how to sail one of these babies…. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the 49er, a rather quick and somewhat unstable 16 foot skiff…. bit of a bugger to control, as this video demonstrates…