Preface

This book is very different from any other sailing manual you will have come across. Not only do we present ground-breaking single-handed techniques for getting on and off berths (including tiny, wobbly French finger berths), picking up and dropping mooring buoys and box mooring, we also present the answer to man overboard retrieval with MOB Lifesavers from Duncan Wells (www.moblifesavers.com) and provide video links to show some of the described techniques in action. Throughout the book you will see a symbol like this and the words ‘scan this QR code to watch a video on…’. If you have a smartphone or tablet and a quick response (QR) code reader app, which you can download for free, then you scan the QR code and the video will play on your device. If you don’t have a phone or tablet you can go to westviewsailing.co.uk/ stress-free-videos and view the videos there.

A little about me: I am 65 years old. I still haven’t decided what I am going to do when I grow up. I started in advertising and moved into performance as a voiceover actor, something I have done for the past 35 years. We had a dinghy at home that got sailed about twice when I was young. I learned to windsurf. I went with friends on their 20-foot motorboat which we would trail to rivers and the sea, to Salcombe mostly. I vowed to buy a big Princess motor cruiser one day and ended up many years later buying one to introduce the family to boating.

As a teenager I sailed on a few racing boats, spent ages sitting on the weather rail being fed Mars bars every now and then and watching as the skipper and the expert crew managed to broach the boat often enough to bust the spinnaker, which pleased the novice crew enormously as from that point the broaching business stopped.

Prior to taking my family out on the water I did my RYA Day Skipper theory and practical and then Yachtmaster theory. The family weren’t all that fussed about the motor boat so I swapped her for a sailing boat, sailed all over the place and did my Yachtmaster MCA exam. Then it was on to be an RYA instructor and setting up my own sail training business, Westview Sailing. I often tell people that I am only an instructor so I don’t forget it all, which I would be bound to do if teaching the subject didn’t keep me on the money.

In April 2006 I was shot in the abdomen by a faulty collision warning flare while making a film about the correct way to deploy safety and emergency flares. Nine months in hospital followed. The flare also went through my right hand, but that has been stitched back together beautifully. To look at me, apart from the fact that I am extremely overweight, you wouldn’t notice a thing. The NHS and one’s body can achieve remarkable things.

Today we just stick with the shore-based courses at Westview and we offer video tutorials that cover all of the shore-based navigational disciplines. RYA students find these very useful as study aids – www.westview sailing.co.uk/video-tutorials. These are also available for download from Udemy, which allows students to take these videos out on the water with them.

I hope you enjoy the book and find the techniques useful. I use them every time I go sailing. If you have any ideas you’d like to share or improvements to what I suggest please do not hesitate to contact me.

DW

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