Training for Day skippers

Two students and one other seeking mileage joined me for the last sail training session of the spring.  From now on I hope to concentrate on cruising although tuition and help is always freely available during the cruises.  I seem to be getting more and more "own boat" coaching to do which is great!  There are lots of things not covered by the RYA syllabus as wall as preparing others to handle heavy weather - a real specialty of mine.

 Anyway this is the crew I had on board for the last training course.  Tom, the one with the beard was great company and in fact I thought I recognised him when he arrived.  It later transpired he had spent a day at my Paragliding school some twenty years ago.  Very good at boat handling - he took the yacht through some quite serious northerly wind (coming all the way from Inverness - you could smell the mars bars frying in the chip shops)  against a strong tide at Lismore light.
The other two, Mark and Kate were on the course as active participants.  They had quite a lot of experience and in fact Kate was very good as a technical sailor so we were most interested in improving navigational and "big - boat" handling skills which went well.  For the night passage we went from Loch Spelve (a delicious meal the night beforehand of mussels fresh from the sea!) to the Garvellachs - having to motor the last couple of miles due to lack of wind.  By the time it came to heading back north towards Oban, the wind had picked up and we were faced with a F 4/5 headwind with twenty miles to go.  Bit of a pain but lots of lessons learned by everyone as we made surprisingly brisk progress towards our target - Kerrera and Oban sound.  At one point in the dark, the wind shifted dramatically and it was Kate's skills as a sailor that suggested the best option of easing sheets and bearing off to get going again.  The actual night passage went well with Kate again as the brains of the operation and we arrived safely back at the marina at 0230 - glad to be below as it was getting pretty cold.
The next week I had some personal tuition for a Boatmaster candidate who needs to qualify to skipper the ferry that runs between Port Askaig on Islay and Jura.  We did the theory course on the yacht and as you might expect - the weather changed to very hot and sunny!  What a pain but we got the work done with the other half of the course to be completed when I return from the St Kilda trip in two weeks.  I left Dunstaffnage (22 degs C) on Thursday evening in shorts and Tee shirt to go home to Skye, when I got out of the car in the early dusk the temperature was 8C!! What a difference and then to cap it all next day when I wanted to cut the grass - it snowed!!  Still, very dry up here and today (Saturday) while I update the blog it is very sunny and bright with a light but again cold, northerly wind.
Next week - KILDA so news of that as the trip progresses if I can get a signal to get on the internet