Dave Ching

The Shape of things to come?

This picture appeared with the heading in a artical in Y&Y, something like “Keeping up standards”. Surprisingly I was not held up as a good example! This is probably my proudest sailing moment so far. The sharp eyed will see Andy Paterson to windward of me.

I started sailing with my dad in a Firefly. I do not know how old but I was one of those kids who got lifted in with a big orange buoyancy aid on - The ones that look like they stop any kind of movement.

Crewing was the thing for me at this time - and we had moved to a faster boat with kite! (GP14) I have spent a lot of time in GP's over the years.

I spent a year in a solo learning how to helm whilst crewing my own Fireball. In this year the two things that changed my sailing life happened. One, I went to a boat show and saw an Extravert (B14e) and decided that was the boat to have. Later I saw a Moth at the club. The reason I was taken by the Moth was I thought it would be the ideal stepping stone to an Extravert. I thought it would be a good place to learn how to helm properly. So far I have never sailied an Extravert!

Last year (2005) I bought a Cherub with Lara so that I could teach her how to sail and we did our first nationals. We were lucky buying such a great boat as Norwegian Blue. Now we have just bought (Summer 2006) another great boat, Shiny Beast. So we are back at the bottom of another steep learning curve.

As you can see my sailing is full of bad decisions that have worked well, which proves there is more than one way to learn.

This is the New comers trophy we won at the 2005 Nationals.