Sailing in Scotland, September 2018.
Spontaneous trips I get the most successful. Almost at the last moment for a visa, I accidentally (there is no chance, right?) I saw the trip announcement. I didn’t know exactly what I was looking for on this expedition, but it was tempting to realize two dreams at once: go to Scotland and sail.
Seeing the ambitious tag # more than yachting, I wondered how yachting could be more than sailing? It turned out that this is not only about the sea, the grotto and the staysail, leventyk or the windfall, yachting is also about people. When I looked at the photos at home, I didn’t believe it at first, 99% of the photos turned out to be portraits (considering that I planned to specialize in landscape photography, yeah). It looks like a tense man suddenly relaxes for a moment and smiles with fantastic sparkles in his eyes, looking into the distance at the waves. Calm girl suddenly lights up, talking about his passion for the sea. Fleeting smile, thoughtful look, sudden laughter. Only one week of the expedition, but how concentrated life is spent with the team. You enter at the beginning of the journey on the boat, and you also seem to go, but the other one. You start to see more clearly the picture of what is happening around, as if the focus of the lens corrected. You stand on the beach with things and you don’t understand why you went ashore, why you should return home, there surrealism awaits you, crazy Moscow, some business that forms and draws itself into its stream, you need to connect to this crazy race, what is its ultimate target? On the yacht, the target is known: Largs – Campbeltown – Ballycastle- Port Ellen – Crinan canal – Largs. Current, wind and waves are known for today, and you just have to go ahead and adjust the course along the way.
You sit on an ebay, you are watered with salt water from above and below, you look at the elements around, and inside you are screaming “aaaaaaaa !!!!!” from delight. It is a pity that I do not have the skill to express my emotions. I remember such uncomplicated delight only in the initial moments of love, even at Cape Cap de Roca in Portugal and on the way to the Brigsdal glacier in Norway, and, perhaps, there was no such thing anymore in adult life.
You stand at the helm, you can’t keep the course straight, the three-meter waves throw the boat and you along with it from side to side, suddenly you enter the rhythm, you catch the right turn of the hand wheel to the right and left, and the yacht slides down the wave and you don’t lose the course. Pure meditation.
I love the sea very much, especially the cold, northern one, this time I recognized it from the other side. It depends on the mentor whether the student loves the case that he is being taught. The student may then not become a master, and maybe it will, there is already a lot dependent on him, but having fallen in love with yachting in life, there is one more thing that brings joy. Sergey, you give people a unique opportunity to go on a boat to challenge themselves, and help them cope with this challenge. And I repeat: it was calm with you. I’m cold-blooded in almost all situations, so I’m a good crisis manager, but more than once I got out of the taxi halfway because I didn’t trust the driver. When you get involved in an adventure, about which you have no idea, the feeling of security is worth a lot. Thank you for a week of happiness.
