You have 1 day of going through the boat systems and making sure you are familiar with the boat and a second day on the water. One of our instructors guides you through some power handling exercises and we make sure that you are completely happy with parking the boat in its particular berth.

This power handling is not a straight forward skill in the Hamble river with tides running up to 2-3 knots. So lots of ferry gliding and good understanding propeller walk is essential.

Tom Wendy and I had 2 thoroughly enjoyable days becoming familiar with the good ship Mirimar and Tom did admirably well coping with everything that I threw at him. We even had enough time to motor out the river and have a look around get the sails up and throw in a few tacks and gybes.

So, lovely to meet you guys and I look forward to seeing you on the water again soon.

When you become over powered especially when sailing close hauled you can instantly reduce the heel on your boat by pinching or heading slightly to close to the wind. Not an easy skill but great fun to practice. Both Alison and Stuart did brilliantly at this.

Another option is to de-power the main, by letting out the main sheet.

As both of these options leave you with a flapping sails this can only ever be a short term solution.

These are the sail controls you have when cruising;

• Sheet
• Halyard
• kicker or Vang
• Outhaul

When over powered your first course of action is to use these controls and wind them all tight, this will flatten the sail your sail, reducing the power in the sail and leave you with a more handle-able boat.

If after flattening your sail you are still over powered then you then will have to reef or shorten sail.

After showing this information practically to the guys we then worked at a sailing exercise increasing our understanding of the wind and tide and using them to our advantage. This allowed us to feel more comfortable in the conditions, which made our sailing happier and more enjoyable.

That wasn’t the end of the day we spent more time learning lots of tricks to pick up mooring buoys and some parking drills for Alison.

But great to sail with you both and I look forward to the next time.

Damien and Trudy are new members on Hufflepuff, a Beneteau 343, out of Port Hamble marina.

To allow them to get going we squeezed their induction into a Monday night and a full Tuesday. The induction allows them to get familiar and ask all the questions they need, before starting out on their fractional membership.

The day on the water is a day of power handling, berthing and some brief sailing, to once again encourage familiarization and shake out those cobwebs.

With all the information and then teaching they had, in such a short time, they did really well in getting to grips with the boat they will be taking out over the next year.

Really nice to meet you guys, well done and hope to see you soon.

The 5 days of the course were split up into 3 days with Alasdair Marshall and 2 days with Rob Shapland-Hill (on the left in the photo). Rodney took the opportunity to get his 2 sons to come on board and also work towards their tickets.

Rodney says

“All three of us thought Alasdair did a great job with the first three days of our Day Skipper Course.

He know his stuff, is very enthusiastic and has exactly the right balance between keeping you at it/testing you, but at the same time making it fun.  The boys absolutely loved it and were very pleased with their progress particularly in the fairly boisterous wind conditions.

The other thing I liked about Alasdair’s style is that he encouraged to make the decisions ourselves rather than just giving us answers to our questions i.e. forcing us to get used to making Skippers’ decisions.  But always there to help out in the event that we cocked up, of course.  It worked really well.  He’s a great asset to SNC.”

Thank you guys, congratulations all three of you on your tickets and see you out on the water.

Another hot day at the end of July saw Adam and his partner Suzannah come down for their induction on Dumledore, out of Port Hamble marina.

They have recently joined our fractional membership programme that sees 7 members and 1 owner member have shared access to a yacht, in this case a Beneateau 323.

The induction over 2 days, gives us the opportunity to run through the entire boat inside and out to look in detail at all the equipment, ask questions and get that great feeling of getting away form it all and having 46 days access to a yacht.

The second day sees us run through a series of power handling techniques designed to help our new members get familiar with their vessel and its berth.

We then head out of the river to have a quick look around, go through the single lined reefing, throw in some tacks and gibes before heading back in.

There is obviously a lot of information being throw at you, but it was a great 2 days. So, nice to meet you guys and I am sure we will see you on the water in the near future.

Andrew Holmes is a member on Dumbledore and with 3 days of instruction booked after the Southampton boat show. Andrew was looking to brush up some parking skills and what better way to do it than with some 1 to 1 instruction, to avoid distractions.

The Hamble river can have some devestatingly strong tides ripping through at over 2 knots in the river. This tide manages to catch out many the un-wary power handler, when trying to park up after a long day sail.

We spent a full day looking a specific handling techniques in open water, learning all the different aspect required to make good decisions on how to handle our yacht. We then took these techniques and reduced the space that we were working in, to make sure we understood them and test our nerve.

Andrew did brilliantly and progressed extremely well, finally parking up and letting lines go, short handed, in challenging wind and tide conditions.

Well done Andrew and I look forward to some open water sailing after the boat show.

I met them all at the start of the course at what looked like another glorious sailing day this season.

They had a great week sailing and when I met them all at the end of their week, they had thoroughly enjoyed exploring all parts of the Solent, being pushed to their limits and coming out with well deserved tickets so well done guys.

• Les Rose – Competent Crew
• Michael Hess – Day Skipper
• Phillip Oliver – Day Skipper

James is a relatively new member on Aragorn and although arriving with a day skipper ticket, wanted to brush up on his skills and spend some time learning to handle the tides and conditions of the Solent. This being the first time he has sailed in the area.

After an intensive morning of power handling, working through nose and stern to the wind manoeuvres, turning in tight spaces and handling the port kick of the Beneteau 323, we went for lunch at the Lymington Haven, who supply a great fish finger sandwich.

The Afternoon saw us running through reefing lines and checking out Yarmouth. This can be a very tight harbour when you can rapidly start running out of space, when you don’t know your way around. So after a familiarization exercise we headed back.

So great day James and thank you, hope you enjoy your days on the water and hope to sail with you again soon.

After going through some of the theories we spent much of the day looking at the various systems, troubleshooting and getting in their and opening up areas of 2 diesel engines that hadn’t see the light of day for some time.

The guys came from both a sailing and motorboat aspect that also showed the different approaches to how we use our engines.

This course has definitely helped me learn how to troubleshoot, how to care and tend our engines from a user point of view.

Well done guys, who all got their ticket, Peter Stephens, Leslie Rose, Carl Grim, Mathew Burton and Adam Hylan. Happy motoring!

We managed to pack out New Milton Pool for a Sea Survival course with 9 candidates, 1 instructor, the very experienced Richard Morley, and 2 very surprised lifeguards who, had never seen swimmers quite so well prepared, for a quick dip.

I joined the guys for the last hour at the Pool and saw them learning to right the liferaft after it had been flipped upside down. They swam as a team with a casualty, having to cover the length of the pool before getting the casualty into the liferaft. They then used the raft paddles to do some paddling, showing how extremely difficult it is to get anywhere. Finally there was an exercise invloving them being stuck underneather the liferaft and having to get out from underneath it.

All of this reminded me how important it is to stay with your vessel, for as long as you can. But that in extreme cases their is the kit their available for use.

It also made me think back to the days before EPIRB and how some long distant cruising sailors spent 3 months in their liferafts, after the loss of their boats. Quite remarkable feats of survival.

Some of the guys were doing their yachtmaster tickets and picking up the requirements for a yachtmaster commercial endorsement. While, others were increasing their awareness of being on the water and learning to use the kit that we see on our boats but hope to never use in anger.

All said they thoroughly enjoyed a very hard worked day and found it both informative and fun.

So well done to Leslie Rose, Paul Ambrose, Dr Martin Seal, his son Trystan Seal, Kathryn Ross, Dave Scaramanga, Trevor Watson, Carl Grim and Mathew Burton who all achieved their 1 day RYA Sea Survival ticket.

Hope to see you all on the water, nice and safely in the boat.