Birvidik

You know I said in the last blog that we didn't want our first real trip to be a plug into wind and sea for seven hours?

Well it wasn't.

It was a plug into wind and sea for eight hours.

It was also a blindingly definitive example of appallingly poor seamanship on my part. The origins of this reveal an example of a psychological phenomenon which I shall claim for my very own. I shall call it 'experiential dissonance' or, more colloquially 'Twat's syndrome'.

There are two mental extremes in which sailing is relatively safe. The first is when you are very inexperienced and nervous. In this stage great care is taken over every detail. Nothing is left to chance and attention to detail borders on OCD, even to the point of using a micrometer to measure the sharpness of the navigation pencils.

The second is where you're very experienced and have been sailing every day for months on end. Everything from boat preparation to second guessing the Weather Gods is second nature and things get done without any conscious thought.

By the end of the summer we are in experienced mode. By the end of the winter we've forgotten it all and have reverted to novice mode. Usually we gradually progress from one to the other over the first couple of weeks sailing. This is a relatively safe and self-moderating process. This year, however, was not a normal start.

We had spent a couple of weeks milling around the Inland Sea waiting for that mythical beast a suitable weather window, which stubbornly refused to materialise. After a week spent back in the marina having the fridge fixed we decided the bank account was showing the strain and so decided to head back into the Inland Sea the next day.

Come the next day, though, conditions looked benign and I made an executive decision. "Sod the pottering - let's go through the bridge and head for Corfu" I cried with all the authority and self-confidence of ignorance. So we did.

When we got through it was a bit lumpy, but we felt committed and so headed on. The wind, waves and swell continued to build. Einstein entered defcom 4, threw up, poohed on the carpet and then retired to the saloon. I went green, and then grey and curled up in the corner of the cockpit. With a great effort of will I avoided subjecting the carpet to further indignity. Liz struggled womanfully on. It was at this point that my woeful lack of preparation began to manifest itself.

Lulled by the couple of weeks on eyeball navigation I had embarked on an open sea voyage, across a notoriously lumpy bit of water, whilst caught between two psychological stools.

• Passage plan? Nope. Just a vague idea in the back of my head.
• Ports of refuge noted? No chance.
• Seasickness prophylactics taken? Obviously not.
• Boat and crew prepared for sea? What do you think.
• Waypoints checked and entered in backup GPS? Of course not.
• Captain in a fit state to concentrate on a small screen in a pitching sea in order to rectify this omission? See 'seasickness prophylactics'.

We couldn't even find the lifejackets for Christ's sake. Well we did eventually, but it was a good job we didn't need to use them in a hurry.

Eight hours later Liz brought the boat into Mourtos and I finally did something useful and tied it up.

Liz is in the process of drawing up the order of ceremony where she tears the epaulets off my T shirt and breaks my sextant over her knee before stripping me of my commission and reducing me to the ranks.