Day Skipper
Sometime after moving to Spain, my good mate Evgeny and I hatched a plan to learn how to sail, earn ourselves watercraft licenses, buy, fix up, customize and berth an old sloop or ketch, then set sail for adventures upon the seas. Now, in 2022, that dream is becoming a reality.
In August, we enrolled in an RYA Day Skipper course through Barcelona Watersports, where we met Faith and began our nautical education. After an eventful summer (during which I earned my sea legs during an F8+ gale on the Myrtoan Sea), Evgeny and I managed to get about halfway through our Theory, moving through modules and solving tests together as a combined effort. Then in mid-October, we spent two weekends completing an applied course on a 42-foot yacht named No Limits, under the supervision of both Faith and Steve, our reliable instructors. Now, in late October, Evgeny and I are working toward completing the Theory part of our sailing education, then writing the exam and finally acquiring our Day Skipper licenses.
Here’s hoping that this is the next big step toward a lifetime of adventures on and amongst the sea! Next step: gathering and honing our expertise, joining as competent crew members… and then finding (and helming) our own vessel.
🌊 UPDATE: JANUARY 2023 ⛵️
Since completing our RYA Day Skipper course in December and receiving our respective sailing licenses, Evgeny and I have since chartered and helmed our own voyages (albeit short day trips for now). While gathering more applied experience, hours and logged miles, we’ve also been working on developing a concept for our own eventual floating man-cave…. but that it another challenge, worthy of it’s own post. ⚓︎
“There is nothing - absolutely nothing - half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.
Simply messing... about in boats — or with boats. In or out of ’em, it doesn't matter. Nothing seems really to matter, that's the charm of it. Whether you get away, or whether you don't; whether you arrive at your destination or whether you reach somewhere else, or whether you never get anywhere at all, you're always busy, and you never do anything in particular; and when you've done it there's always something else to do, and you can do it if you like, but you'd much better not."
- Kenneth Grahame, from 'The Wind in the Willows'
