My first sail with the club

By Linda Zaben

My first sail with the club was supposed to be a day sail but in the end it turned out to be a maintenance day with John on Fizzgig. John, very kindly picked me up from home and drove me down to Chichester and dropped me off home again in the evening, that was great for me as I had not been to Chichester Marina before. It was a very nice day, the weather was lovely and sunny and I met Alan, Ian and Doh.

My real first sail with Ashdown was the bank holiday trip to Cherbourg. I went down to Chichester on the Friday evening as I did not want to get up at 4am to be in Chichester by 6am. At 6 ish on Saturday morning the rest of the crew arrived. There was Ian and his son and Guy and his sister Libby. Libby had come down from Scotland. Guy and Ian provided all the supplies for the weekend. After we all got settled in we set sail. John did set a watch system, but being new to all of this I did not take a lot of notice of it, nor did the rest of the crew. This lead to a ticking off for all of us before the return trip which was quite right, especially as we did a night sail back and the watch needed to be adhered to. We had loads of Pizza, sausage rolls and cornish pasties to eat on the trip over.

Once in Cherbourg we had a delicious meal provided by Ian. We had a cruise meal the following day with the crews of Summer Song, Whisper, Blue Scherzo and Fizzgig. I think that some crew were a little disappointed as even though the restaurant had been booked they did not seem to be very prepared for us and we were sitting outside, which was ok but more on the pavement than in the restaurant area. The food was good though. After the meal we set sail back for Chichester, my first night cruise. I was not looking forward to it as I had not done a night cruise before. It was not too bad, the watch system was adhered to this time. I seem to remember someone mentioning that we had a near miss, I was asleep at the time. We arrived back safely in Chichester by about 9 am. I was exhausted and I guess everyone else was too. I enjoyed the weekend immensely, especially when I came on watch at 6 in the morning when the sun was rising and the sea was like a mill pond, not good for sailing though, we motored all of the way. It did feel a bit like big brother though, being thrown on a boat full of strangers for the weekend, however when that seems to happen the strangers soon become friends that I am looking forward to seeing again. That was my first experience with Ashdown which lead to a great summer of sailing for me and I look forward to many more days spent in the pleasure of sailing with the members of Ashdown.