The NONSTOP Team Sail to Guernsey
The NONSTOP Team set sail in early July from Dartmouth on a once in a life time trip to St Malo, France.
Now, you may have guessed from the title of this post that the final destination was never reached. Alas, some unforeseen circumstances came into our path…
…we never made it to St Malo but it turns out Guernsey is just lovely at this time of year!
I thought I might share the experience with you, with a few photos…
The crew:
James Dodd: Skip Patrick Taylor: The NONSTOP Big Cheese Dave Richards: The great man from Canada Harry Bowman: The office entertainment Tom Gordon-Walker: The one with the tan Tori Houghton: Anti-sick tablet dispenser Georgie Bushe: Token puker Rupert Taylor: The NONSTOP Mascot
Rupert and Dave
The team arrived in Dartmouth at 7pm, it was a lovely mild July evening and there was excitement in the air. We all climbed aboard the great ‘Nimrod’, Patrick’s beautiful Dehler 47 and tucked into a selection of lovely pasties (when in Rome!)
After a quick shandy and a safety briefing from the Skip, the NONSTOP team set sail. It was all smiles and laughter as we settled in and waved good-bye to land, it would be the last we would see for the next 20 hours.
A gentle tail wind blew us in the right direction (I have very little ’sailing’ lingo in my vocabulary) - in essence, the wind blew, the sailors sailed and we cruised along at an average of 8 knots, which felt pretty quick! The skies darkened and night came over - the ‘watch’ system began. Dave, James and Patrick started and the rest of us went down below for a bit of kip. At 1.00am the ‘dog’ watch started and Tom, Harry and I (Georgie) took the helm… there is no need to go in to details but I will just say that I am no sailor - so the boys sailed while I ensured that the mackerel were well fed. To help those on watch stay awake (and the rest of the crew!) Harry decided to sing at the top of his voice, the words to all the national anthems he knew. Which turned out to be quite a few! Meanwhile Tom kindly steered Nimrod out of the way of any of the huge cargo ships.
Tom at the helm
The watch systems carried on, and a few of us (don’t worry - I will mention no names!) took turns in ‘feeding the mackerel’ until the sun rose, the seas calmed (a little!) and the Channel Islands came into view. It was decided by James and Patrick that due to the imminent bad weather that perhaps we shouldn’t sail all the way to St Malo and that Guernsey looked just lovely and to my absolute delight, it looked close!
To cut a long story short, we spent a lovely day in sunny Guernsey and the sailing was an exciting and enthralling experience! We made good time, in apparently relatively calm seas (although some of us would beg to differ) and more importanly by the time we were on land, everyone was smiling again - The team had bonded!
Moral of the story : Sailing is a fantastic sport, exciting and lots of fun but let’s just say, there are a few of us who will never touch another pasty, ever again!
I think I will be sticking to the mountains and snowboarding from now on! If anyone agrees and would like to chat about our ski and snowboard instructor and improvement courses, please give me a call!
