Charlie Andrews

I sailed quite a lot as a child. My dad bought an old Optimist for my brother and named it the 'Berliner', as it was painted in the colours of a the German flag. When he stopped using it, it was passed on to me. Monday was for practice and Saturday was race day. I eventually got older and outgrew my little Oppy, moving on to different dinghy's, eventually crewing a Fowey River for my best friend's dad.

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At some point I stopped, probably when school started taking up so much of my time that many of my less important hobbies were left by the wayside. It was only in the Summer of 2018, when I went sailing on a lake in New Hampshire, that I realised how much I missed it.

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I spend the latter half of the summer researching boats online, finding out which were in my price range and that also had a sufficient space. After a bit of searching, i came across an old motor sailor on Gumtree. It was built in 1979 and had a working engine. The only issue was it's location. It was moored in Falmouth, Cornwall and i needed to get it to Brighton before uni started again.

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We set sail one September afternoon, spirits high. A crew of Curly, the skipper, the one with the most sailing experience and an Atlantic crossing to his name, myself and my friend  George who 'can sail'. We sailed through the night, keeping a permanent lookout for lobster pots and other vessels. We took shifts of six hours on and three hours off so as two people were always on watch. George had fell ill during the night, cutting the number of able bodied crew by a third.

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A school of about twenty dolphins came to play in the wake of our boat as the sun was rising to a blustery day. They came back a few times throughout the morning. This was a highlight of the trip. The weather got steadily worse throughout the day until the little yacht was being rocked all over the place by the waves. We were nearing St Katherine's point when we put out a call on the radio to ask the Solent Coastguard for an update on the weather. They replied that it was set to get even worse.

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'Pan pan, pan pan, pan pan. Small yacht Vigilanter requesting assistance', we put out a call for help. It wasn't an emergency but the skipper could see it turning into one. I had got seasick as well in all the panic, exhaustion and cold of the situation. The Swanage lifeboat was dispatched to help us and shielded us from the weather while we made the hour voyage back to a safe harbour.

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After a night at the youth hostel, which was broken up with trips to hug the toilet, three became two. George decided it was all a bit much, which I don't blame him for. So Curly and I went back to the boat and sailed to Great Yarmouth to wait for the wash through the Solent to be on our side.

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We navigated the Solent through the night, traversing a mess of  red and green flashing lights. I am red green colourblind, which definitely didn't help. After a really long night of Curly and I exchanging stories (Curly had more stories than me), we finally made it to our final port of call, Brighton. 

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This adventure was a great lesson in the importance of being prepared. It would have gone more smoothly if we had a week of preparation beforehand and given ourselves longer to make the voyage. It was however time we didn't have. The true heroes of the story are the RNLI who I have always held in high esteem.