Features
A long way back to the sea
Geoff Tayler tells the story of buying his first yacht and learning to race at HHYC.
After two years had gone by, I had not received a single phone call, e-mail or offer to
spend a day pulling on ropes and getting wet. I decided to take matters into my own hands.
The startup had done moderately well, but it was time to move on. When I left to take
over the management of another IT firm, I was pleasantly surprised to have made a sizable
profit on my modest stake in the business. So finally, after 25 years, I found myself in a
relatively secure career, with money in my pocket, and living in a place surrounded by
water to the extent that you can never be more than 15 kilometres from it.
In November 2011, I signed up for a keelboat sailing course at Hebe Haven Yacht Club.
The idea was to relearn some of the skills I’d acquired as a child, and figure out if I even
still enjoyed sailing or if it was just a nostalgic memory. I can thoroughly recommend this
course to anyone interested in sailing. Both of my instructors were superb and have been
invaluable since in helping me navigate my way through the minefield of challenges in
purchasing a boat, joining the yacht club, getting a mooring, etc.
Having reaffirmed my love of sailing, the next step was to obtain my Pleasure Vessel
Operators License from the Hong Kong Marine Department. To prepare for it, I chose
to take a ten-week course run by the Hong Kong Sailing Federation. Again, I have to
thank the excellent instructors who taught me so much and have been kind enough to
continue to offer me advice since.
When I was a child, my father was a keen yachtsman and every available weekend
and holiday was spent sailing somewhere from Gillingham Marina on the Medway River
in the UK. We visited most of the ports on the Atlantic coasts of Holland, Belgium and
France, and travelled to Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Spain and Portugal.
The pinnacle of our sailing adventures was a two-year odyssey to the Caribbean and
back, an experience which defined so much of my life afterwards that you could almost
say that it made me what I am today—for better or for worse.
So, sailing has been in my blood from the very beginning and, since I left home and
embarked on my own chequered path through life, it’s always been something I’ve wanted
to return to. The problem has always been that I’ve either been too busy, too poor or too
far away from the sea to make owning a boat practical.
In 2008, I found myself unexpectedly laid off from my job as a mid-level manager in
the IT department of a large investment bank in Tokyo. Equally unexpectedly, two weeks
later I found myself here in Hong Kong, having been contacted by a former colleague to
join him and a few other acquaintances in an IT consultancy startup.
Initially living in a serviced apartment overlooking the harbour, I would look out of the
window on the weekends and see the yachts sailing by and feel the pull of the sea again.
I signed up on the crew lists at the yacht clubs, and every time I met anyone from the
sailing community I would put myself forward as prospective crew.
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Finally, on 7 August 2012, I bought Paloma, a 37-year-old Hunter Sonata. She was
in pretty poor shape, having been neglected for several years, but she sailed really well,
and I was smitten. I knew I would have to spend a fair bit of cash bringing her back to
life, but it seemed worth it to me. I knew next to nothing about Sonatas, and even less
about Paloma or her history.
She was moored in Tai Tam Harbour and, since I was now living in Clearwater Bay,
trekking over to the Island was less than convenient. I wanted to bring her to Hebe
Haven, and that meant joining a club in order to get a mooring and a sampan to take
me out to the boat.
It never occurred to me that joining a yacht club was going to require anything more
than signing a cheque for some membership fees. I should have known better. First, you
must apply to be a member, and your application must be countersigned by two existing
members who will vouch that they know you and that you are a suitable candidate.
This one completely threw me for a while; as a new yachtsman and owner, how could
I be expected to know anyone? Almost the only way to meet other yacht owners is to
socialise at the yacht club but, in theory at least, you can’t do that unless you are already
a member, because they won’t let you in or serve you.
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