For the last two sailing seasons, the National Sailing Centre has run introductory courses for dinghy camping. The basic aim of these courses has been to give people the opportunity to gain practical experience in the art of living in small boats and to give a guide to the types of boat most suitable for this purpose, before they go to the expense of buying their own.

Wayfarers and Seafarers (18 foot day-boats with a small cuddy and 6 h.p. outboard) are used for these courses and have proved ideal for the Centre’s needs.

The first three days of the course are spent in preparation, covering such important items as basic navigation and seamanship, also the important considerations of menus and stowage. This is followed by three days of sailing and three nights sleeping in the boats.

On the 2nd of June 1970, a group of three students and an instructor made their final preparations to leave the Centre. All three of the students were experienced sailors, two of them having been dinghy camping at the Centre the year before. With one Wayfarer and one Seafarer, we headed westwards with the aid of a spring ebb and a light southerly wind. By noon we had passed Hurst Fort. In the mid-afternoon we passed the Olympic trials in Poole Bay (rather, they passed us!). We anchored in Studland Bay at 1700 hours, bathed, and walked out to the Old Harry Rocks. We slept well that night having covered over thirty miles with the minimum of effort.

The next morning, after a leisurely breakfast, we caught the last of the flood into Poole Harbour. We sailed around the back of Brownsea Island and on up to Poole Town Quay. We sailed at 0300 hours to catch the tide out of the harbour and back to the Solent. The wind increased as we left the harbour, and we decided to motor-sail in the Seafarer and to tow the Wayfarer until dawn. The early morning forecast told us that easterly gales were imminent, and the combination of this news and the ever-increasing motion finally forced our female member of the crew to leave her lilo and join us in the cockpit, only to be welcomed by the largest wave of the day!

We entered Yarmouth Harbour at 1030 and slept for most of the afternoon, dining on local crab and a bottle of wine (neither being provided by the Centre).

The tired but satisfied crews returned to Cowes in time for lunch on Friday, having covered seventy-three miles with some very interesting sailing.

Another week’s cruise started on the 2nd of September, with three instructors, three Wayfarers, three Seafarers and twelve students, three of whom were female. Owing to the bad weather conditions the entire week was spent in the Solent visiting Fishbourne, Yarmouth and Lymington for the night stops. We had one perfect day, leaving Yarmouth after breakfast, sailing into Southampton Water and lunching at Ashlett Creek, and then catching the ebb tide back to Lymington for the night. So in three days afloat we covered fifty-four miles and visited four harbours, all this being possible despite very strong winds, owing to the shelter and safety which is provided by the Solent.