Afterlaunching in April 2003 we had to learn to sail. Here's what I wrote in May 2003. The weather caught us out on Sunday. The forecast was for ENE at 5 to 10 knots, changing to a southerly at 10 knots, and a balmy autumn 16 degrees C, after morning fog. Just right for a couple of duffers to go and practice the ropes. We got to our boat late in the morning, and the fog was hanging on in the west, a great grey bank of wet wool. Out on the water was lovely though, and we already had the southerly as we pottered along on the first leg of a triangle that should have taken us past the beaches of Port Melbourne and St Kilda, the second leg across the bay to Altona and back around Williamstown to our mooring. We lunched on the way, homemade wholegrain bread with fresh brie and pickled chillies, plus a clove or two of fresh garlic for relish. All washed down by a Corona, cool from the bilge. On the second leg though, everything went quiet. The breeze dropped from 5 or 6 knots knots, to a couple of knots, to nothing. The waves, that had been less than half a meter, flattened out and our progress, which had been sedate, went to snail-like. Eventually we sat and slatted. There was no breeze at all. We watched the smoke from a ship’s funnel in the working wharfs at Williamstown rise slowly to a great height in the air, before it slightly bent and wafted away to the northeast. We gazed down the bay to the southwest, where we could see miles away, from where the wind would come, the remains of a fleet race of keelers. All the spinnakers had collapsed and those boats were as listless as ours. I guess we could have coped if we had not been drifting slowly into the shipping channel. We were lucky that no ships came through while we drifted, but after about 2 hours we thought it was time we left the area. We tried to flag down the first yacht that came by under power, and they were all under power at that stage, but the couple on board thought we doing no more than waving happily to them. They motored past, the lady staring intently forward as she took lessons on the tiller, and both she and her mate made deaf to our shouts by their diesel throbbing underfoot. I thought a little about my decision not to install an inboard in our boat. I thought more about our decision made every time we go sailing not to mount our outboard because it is “too difficult” to reach out over the stern. Happy would I have been to have that motor then. I saw us drifting onto the rocks, (the tide was coming in) or being run down, and I brought the life jackets up into the cockpit. I rang my brother at home, to have him look up the number of the marina along from out marina, so that if worse came to worst we might be able to hire a tow. I waved frantically to a big glass cat. The catamaran willingly and cheerfully assisted us back to our mooring. It was a charter boat, full of party people who were demolishing what must have been a pretty serious cargo of alcohol. We will rescue you, the party people said. Take this rope, the crew said, and we did. At about 4 knots, and travelling straight and true, the catamaran wafted us back to our mooring and left us with cheery waves and beer fumes. We enjoyed our last Corona on the mooring. When the cover was on, and the bird netting secured we rowed back to shore, into a beautiful calm and clear evening, with the water unmoving and like a sheet of glass. We are truly grateful to operators of that catamaran, and quite positive that we need to do something about a permanent installation for the outboard. It is so easy for duffers to get caught out, in many ways. We have run over our dinghy, been out in breezes that we should have reefed for but were too afraid to go up on the deck to the mast, and now been ignominiously towed. How little sailing credibility we have though, was brought home to us on this windless Sunday – we had absolutely no means on board of doing anything about getting ourselves home. No motor, no oar or sweep, no radio. Just a mobile phone. The fog is hanging around again today – we would still be out there without that tow. We owe them! JR