Back in Falmouth I was reunited with Lois who arrived early to attend the opening of John and Jo Dyers art exhibition at St. Michael's Mount.
After a hurried goodbye to Freya's crew I started a two day course on Heavy Weather Sailing and Survival at Sea. Quite a number of the other students are planning for the AZAB Azores and Back race in June. I was fascinating to hear many stories of storms at sea around the world from these seasoned short handed sailors. (They didn't have short hands - they just sail on their own or with just one crew across the oceans of the world)
We had several practical sessions with our Lifeboatman MBE instructor. For one we attempted to recover a 'man over board', a convenient diver who seems to spend most of his time in the harbour. For this we rigged a 'handy billy' attached to the hallyard on a yacht - see picture.
On the Sunday we went off to a swimming pool in Truro where we jumped in with full sailing kit on and then exhausted ourselves getting into a liferaft.
On Monday evening we went along with Esther to a folk dancing evening in a little pub by the harbour in Falmouth - great fun!
From Monday Lois was in student mode doing her Day Skipper theory course at Cornish Cruising, whilst I looked after Simba at Mylor revising my Yachtmaster theory. Each evening we would compare notes and help each other.
Esther also got in on the sailing, starting a dinghy sailing course on racing with some other uni students. They went out in quite a blow on Wednesday evening, she lost count of how many times she capsized, but she really enjoyed it.
Lois was delighted to pass her exams on Friday.
We enjoyed a relaxing day today, Saturday, including a walk at Mawnan at the Helford River entrance.
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