Distant rain moved across the sky like a silver veil. Behind the rain, the land and sea had become one: just a smudge of grey, with Plymouth somewhere in our wake.
I watched the shimmering curtain from my seat at the helm. It was our 23rd day cruising around the coast of Great Britain and, for a novice sailor with just a handful of days’ experience prior to the voyage, I was finally starting to get the hang of things.
I was ironically admiring my new-found steering skills when the squall hit: 27 knots straight into the side of the boat. One moment the deck was flat, the next it was heeled. With a scream, I yanked on the tiller, pulling it towards me. It was an amateur move and the boat tipped further.
My fiancé Mark scuttled into the cockpit yelling at me: ‘Push the tiller away!’ I did what he said and shoved it with all my might. The sails flapped, the boom quivered: I’d sent the boat into an unplanned tack. Mark wrestled the tiller from my hands and pulled some ropes and winched some others. And just as quickly as it arrived, the squall dissolved into the ether. The boat had calmed down but I remained a nervous wreck.
That was the most scared I felt during the 114 days of sailing clockwise around the coast of Great Britain. It was the moment my rosetinted glasses were swiped away and flung overboard. This wasn’t the four-month summer holiday of sunsets and pina coladas I’d imagined. It certainly wasn’t a gentle meander down a river and
