Last night I unexpectedly got to go racing on the Harbour with the Royal NZ Yacht Squadron. My cousin Geoff, who I don’t think I had seen in over 10 years, also has a boat on the marina here and had invited me to come over and say hi before he and his crew went out for their Wednesday night race. I knew they had a full boat so wasn’t expecting to go sailing, but when I got there they were able to get me a place on another boat, a Stewart 34 which happens to be owned by Roy Dickson, one of NZ’s most well known sailors and father of the US America’s Cup skipper Chris Dickson.
Great experience – very educational! They boat was skippered by a guy who runs the youth coaching program at the Squadron, so they were a pretty hot team. They put me on the headsail winch in the cockpit (also the spinnaker pole brace) and gave me plenty of advice about what I needed to do. I made a few mistakes at some critical moments but they were very patient with me. The most interesting part of the race was when a large ship passed us on the spinnaker leg and we needed to cross its path to get to the mark we were headng for. We ended up sailing right alongside the huge wall of steel as the ship passed us and then cut in under its stern, starting the turn even before the ship had got completely past us. Pretty interesting! It was a fun time sailing and also great to be able to catch up with Geoff later over dinner.