Why sailing with teens makes such a rewarding experience
Nick Ridley reflects on his years helping teenagers to discover the freedom and adventure of sailing
Having run outdoor pursuits in Scotland, moving south to the flat Kent countryside left me uninspired when it came to devising a physically challenging, emotionally demanding and spiritually rewarding experience in the wild for my teenage charges. Just as I was giving up hope I had my eureka moment: get them afloat!
Translating the vision into reality was the next issue. I would need a seasoned skipper to organise a sailing trip, find willing volunteers from the school staff, persuade parents and convince Year 10 students that the promise of trepidation, deprivation and undulation was synonymous with exhilaration, and that the burdens of cold, seasickness and bruises were just a few fleetingly painful but eternally formative features of a thorough education.
I turned to the Combined Cadet Force (CCF) and the boss of their sail training,
Lieutenant Commander Peter Harvey, who agreed to put together a fleet of yachts, each professionally skippered and mated. Peter plotted a four-day passage from Chatham to Ramsgate to Calais, and back, with flexibility in case the weather wasn’t kind as we would be sailing in mid-october.
The day to depart soon arrived, and as we assembled on the pontoon at Chatham, Peter briefed the teenagers on the nature of life at sea and the challenges of sailing. Throughout the passage, the youngsters kept a diary, and flicking through some of these entries from that first afternoon was illuminating. ‘We stowed our gear and got used to our impressive bunks. Mine had at least six inches headroom. Call those bunks? Shelves with foam on top would describe them better.’
The leg to Ramsgate was on gentle seas and largely uneventful, until shattered by all the shambolic fun of multiple first berthings. Having cooked a meal onboard, many of the students ventured into Ramsgate to top up on a Mcdonald’s, before returning.
We were away at dawn and I can only hope that the 14-year-olds appreciated the unusual beauty of their early reveille: a rising sun on an open sea. I suspect some of it might have been lost on them, as this diary entry revealed, ‘I was woken by snoring, sat up, banged my head on the ceiling. I had almost dropped off, then was brutally woken and told to get up, get the gear on and get
on deck and cast off to catch the tide, the bloody tide. It was still dark; give me school any day!’
Calais was an opportunity for the crews to compare stories: skippers (tyrannical), boats (cramped), pump-out loos (medieval), damp clothes (yuck!), and, of course, an opportunity to get on the mobile and whine to Mum and Dad that this was not education, but torture.
One student wrote: ‘On the last day the sea was extremely choppy and not all of us felt too good. On deck it was teeth-chattering cold and we even got bored of pretending to be Kate clutched by Leo [recreating the Titanic bow scene]. Land again at last. Packing took hours and then there was boat cleaning, extra boat cleaning, despotic skipper’s ultimate boat cleaning, and finally, goodbyes...’
Once the bruises subsided, the mental scars were transformed into battle honours and the miseries of the moment recast as the emblems of experience, we debriefed the crews. Their responses were quite balanced, more positive than otherwise, and revealed no marked gender bias. So, I concluded, an undertaking worth repeating.
A few years later we opted for the saner, safer Solent, and decided to sail in May, to ensure more congenial weather. But life is full of ironies. The rain was horizontal in its assault on the school. It was still horizontal when we reached Portsmouth, but cancelling was not an option. So that afternoon we went to sea, Force 6, much reduced canvas, faces turning green, and the smaller yachts not venturing out of the harbour. ‘Don’t worry, no-one ever died of sea-sickness,’ the skipper interjected.
‘Oh God, it’s only the hope of dying that’s keeping me going!’ came the youthful retort. The storm abated a little for the second day but battering against wind, and later against tide, proved a battle too far, so with 70 sighs of relief the demented beat towards Newtown Creek became a measured run towards Cowes.
That year turned out to be a harshly formative experience with some sickness, some moaning, but much gritty resilience too; a badge of honour, worn with pride. As each year passed, we refined the adventure. We selected more yachts requiring real and constant effort. On board the 72-foot wooden ketch, Bulldog, there was not a winch in sight, and sweating and heaving took on the age-old mariners’ meaning. Peter Harvey livened things up by liaising with the coastguard for helicopter rescue practice. Other variations included nights at anchor, with anchor watch maintained throughout the sunless hours. One student wrote: ‘We sat in the cockpit, in the freezing cold, wearing every item of clothing we had packed, huddled together. It was so peaceful, just sitting out in the pitch black, under the stars, with complete silence all about us.’ Such a lyrical response to exacting experience is every teacher’s dream.
And the moral of this annual tale of joy and woe? Our duty to the young is to challenge them, to transport them into realms beyond the ordinary, to make tough demands of them. They will respond, and they will surprise us. What’s more, they will surprise themselves. That is education.