Sailing on a Friday.

We had a team building exercise all day on Friday at a regatta event with a chance to raise some money for Water Aid as well. Each team entered contributes some money to Water Aid to be able to race.

Yachting is definitely something that I've never done before and I was eager to have a go and see what it was like.

We couldn't have been luckier with the weather on Friday. It rained quite often on Thursday and was rather overcast all day. Friday was a totally different story though as there were totally clear skies and it was sunny but not too hot either.

The picture above shows our team in the Regatta. From left to right is Allen, Shane, Roger, Paul and Ian. We were all given matching T-Shirts and a lunch box with a baseball cap.

This is the boat that we were allocated with a crew of four. It appeared as if the boat was owned by one guy and the three other members were either his friends or other people who allocated their free time for a chance to have a sail and race.

It wasn't a very large boat and I would be surprised if we could fit another couple of people on there. I think the owner of the boat Michael, was quite well off and enjoyed his sailing quite often as he was very very brown!

The boat costs around $360,000 to buy from new and was very very nice both upstairs and downstairs. I could quite easily spend quite a while relaxing on it, but we weren't there to relax.

The man on the right at the wheel is Michael the man whose boat it was. He was generally very easy going and just wanted us to have a good time. You could tell throughout the race that he was also quite competitive and wanted to really win.

We didn't end up doing that much onboard the boat other than be dead weights, and drink as much beer as we wanted. Whenever the boat tacked (changed direction to the wind) we were told how to move from one side of the boat to the other to distribute the weight.
Sometimes only some of us were told to move to one side and so on. It was all quite good fun for me, being much smaller I found it quite easy to move around and avoid the ropes and main mast

We were basically sat about half way down the boat on the side and could dangle our legs overboard to help with the weight distribution. At times the boat was really leaning over while the wind blew on the mast and we held on to the edge of the boat.

Roger also managed to have a go at pulling and adjusting the ropes to move the sails around the mast. It looked like a lot of fun and I would have liked to have a go too, but didn't get a chance.

We eventually finished second in the race and was beaten at the post by another boat which physically came last. Because all the boats were slightly different there was a handicap system in play. So it wasn't really the actual place you finished but rather the time after an adjustment.

There were some fast parts of the race when the wind was blowing strong but there were also plenty of very slow moments when there wasn't any wind and we hardly moved at all! These moments reminded me of "canal police", we were mostly sat there waiting for the wind to pick up and trying to do anything to make the boat move faster like moving all the weight to the front of the boat. A bit strange really, but fun none the less.

Overall I enjoyed myself and it's something else that I can tick the box off on but I doubt I'd really pay to go yachting again, it was fun but didn't really grab me with excitement in the same way that snowboarding might. I guess if you have loads of money and can afford to take time off to play around in the sea then it can be fun and also a great way to get away from everyone and relax.