I had never owned a boat until I bought Second Wind, late in 1999.
My sailing experience was limited mainly to dinghies, which I had enjoyed
in my teenage years and I had done little sea sailing. When I took early
retirement from my academic job, I bought the boat, a 29' sloop, at the
Southampton Used Boat Show, and, just before Christmas I decided I wanted
to sail her to Greece. By April I had completed a Coastal Skipper (theory)
course and a Day Skipper practical and was ready to start on my first cross-channel
trip.
It was a disaster. We set out at 4pm with a NE wind blowing force 4-5, which steadily increased. I had two friends with me, one who was very experienced. But the boat proved very difficult to control in such conditions. After several involuntary gybes after which we had to take the boat round 360 degrees to recover our tack, we decided to abandon the attempt, at around 9pm. The question was then how to get back. Perhaps unwisely, we decided to sail around the Isle of Wight, but by the time we made it, the tide was against us as well as the wind, which had reached gale force by this time. The balance of the boat was wrong and though the tattered (by now) sails were well reefed we couldn't steer close to the wind and eventually tried to use the engine to get to Poole. But it pulled less and less effectively and eventually stopped. By now it was 5 in the morning and we were all tired not having managed proper watches. Though we were still being pushed off shore we called up the coastguard and explained our situation. He promptly called out the Swanage lifeboat, which arrived in less than an hour and towed us into Poole and left me to get the engine working again, which took two full days (due to diesel bug in the pipes).
My hope of setting out at Easter for Greece was shattered, though I learned a huge amount from the experience. First I had to discover what was wrong with the boat and that took more than a month of communication with the Australian designer, Bruce Roberts. It turned out that the mast had been set 6" too far back, when the boat had been extended 6" by the original builders, who were fitters not sailors. I had no intention of moving it, so I brought the mast upright, which involved two new stays, and extended the rudder, which was a little smaller than planned. Early tests were promising and my dreams looked on course again.
But I didn't want to set out again without a proper test and for that I went across the channel in the middle of June with the same experienced friend, George Robins. The trip out was scary as we only had 1/2 mile of visibility most of the way and crossed the shipping lanes without radar and without seeing any of the boats we knew were there (we heard some of them). This was my first cross-channel trip in a sailing boat and indeed the first time I had been out of sight of land. But the return journey at night was beautiful and we sailed to within a few miles of Poole, until the wind died at dawn.
The uncertainties of the boat meant that getting crew for the trip was left far too late. I had put myself on the Cruising Association skipper list and fixed up crew for the first leg only a week before departure. I had decided to go down the west coast of France and through the Canal du Midi and had crew promised from there on, though in the event, I was let down with one week's notice when already in the canals. I had made arrangements with other friends for various points along the way though most had to be renegotiated. But I had my charts and plans, so I set out.