Saturday 23rd June – A Reluctant Fail

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Not me - I am still hanging in there but it took me an hour and a half to get from Ronin to the breakfast room this morning. I was up at 5am this morning, sourcing my sugar from various stores around the site. I now have a kettle, a mug, a working fridge, tea from England (don’t I Mel) and bottled water. Sugar was a real victory - a whole half a box.

So, I spent an hour or so celebrating with one tea after another. Reluctantly shutting my cabin door, I left Ronin as the guests gathered. A few smiling faces, working their way down the jetty, asked me what the wind was doing today but I declared a celebrated unawareness as I was off.

This week was a hard slog through expectations and hot weather. I can get away with the voodoo I apply to sailing because folk love the idea that sailing is intuitive. I can say: if you really want to improve your wind awareness you must listen to what is not there and steer by it; become your boat; become the sea; the wind is yours if you open your sails to it. But all this can fray the edges of a complete technician. What can I say when my belief is that there are no bad students, only bad teachers? So a very reluctant “fail” was harder than you could perhaps imagine. …but what a buffoon.

One and a half hours standing in the sun, talking to guests whose two minute input must surely be a pleasantry for me. What goes through your mind is a kind of mathematical equation of speed, time and distance applied to conversation, etiquette and proximity to shade. The lack of wind today makes this a real issue. I need to get to somewhere cool. During breakfast I was surreptitiously aware of how much water I was losing. Today’s temperature is 42 degrees.

I have requested a transfer to Dubrovnik. It is to be sure you are in the wrong place when basic requirements are offered as rewards and I long to be recognised for my efforts. My students have tipped me heavily and recounted the comments from their feedback forms which invariably go missing in the management process before they can reach me. The corruption is a shock to those who believe the system can function correctly in the first place. …and, for a while, I did. The reasoning is that the standard is “…much better than Pirelli…”, another club, but this is not backed-up by Pirelli’s previous employees even if it were the point. Not enough complained but all expressed their gratitude for my efforts and some standards did pick-up a little; cornflakes were added to breakfast choice and, once, eggy-bread appeared from nowhere. The rat-man was counting his collection of 50-some-odd used traps whilst I ate breakfast - this is because we eat breakfast twenty feet from the industrial-sized bins which serve the 400 capacity hotel. There is little chance my 24 year old manager would comprehend the intricacies of basic needs.

All is well in paradise then. The sailing has gone well, so don’t go thinking I can’t escape the politics - there’s a whole sea out there. And I’m sure Dubrovnik will heal the over-worked and underfed tiredness - if not, I’m coming home.

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