Diary of a girl at Sea – Sailing for the first time!

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Day 4

The last thing Heidi said to us before going to bed was that if any of us woke up in the night to go to the toilet, we should check our position relative to the island and other boats – this led to me having dreams about us floating away during the night. Jackie woke at 4am but was happy to report we were still at anchor and in the right place! Our homework last night was to write a Mayday call. Heidi gave each of us a boat name to use, I had Mary Rose, Jackie had Titanic and Jo had Costa Concordia: Hopefully not a bad omen we thought! So after breakfast we performed our Mayday calls. Jackie, Jo, Heidi and myself took the dinghy over to the island again for a morning swim, it was such a beautiful setting. We were beginning to understand that the sailing world is very small – Heidi met some people at the beach who also live in Hog Island in the Grenadines. We also saw the famous Tropic Birds from the beach. Before we left to sail for the day, Natalie and Heidi showed us how to do the daily engine checks. We then set off for Dickenson Bay navigating through the coral again, there was a good amount of girlie chat on the way, nothing too bitchy but the required amount! We sailed onto anchor once we arrived at the bay; it’s pretty busy area as there is a Sandals resort there. We had a little time off as we were doing a night sail that evening so all the girls had a swim and then a sun-bathe on the deck; this seemed to cause much delight to the male guests of the Sandals resort who were circling us in their Hobie cats!
Back to work – we had had a competition to practice all the knots we had learnt; Jo & I were joint winners! We also had a test on parts of the boat. We sailed off anchor (sailing on and off anchor was criteria that Natalie had to perform for her Day Skipper tasks). On route Natalie found out that her parents had just sailed to Antigua and were also on the west coast, they were anchored in Deep Bay so we did the sailing version of a “fly by” with Natalie at the helm and the rest of us taking her orders short tacking round the boats in the bay and more importantly around her parents boat. She is “Lily Maid” a Classic yacht built in 1904 – truly a beauty! We continued as we ventured into our night hours, first was a stunning sunset including a viewing of the famous “Green Flash”. Then it was soon very dark, the wind picked up to 20knots. Natalie briefed us on the night sail, we were all “clipped on” which is standard at night. Natalie was piloting whilst we took turns at the helm. We sailed into St Johns using the channel markers. We then continued round to Deep Bay to anchor next to “Lily Maid” and also Georgio Armani’s house! Whilst Jackie and I cooked a delicious Pumpkin Risotto, the others entertained guests on board – Natalie’s mother, brother and family friend. A few red wines were consumed but as we had guests they were pretty sparse measures!

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