It took less than five days to transform me from landlubber to salty sea dog. But I knew I had made it when, struggling to keep the yacht upright in a force 8 gale, I uttered no more than the mildest of sailor's curses as a freezing wave crashed over the bow and into my face.
The yacht had heeled over at 30 degrees, but I merely wiped the icy water from my eyes as best I could and jammed my foot even more firmly against the side of the cockpit. As water dripped from every inch of me, the memory of having tripped gaily into the Port Solent marina in Portsmouth a few days earlier, with dry hair, a dainty summer dress and pretty strappy sandals, seemed like an image from another era.
As a teenager, I sailed fairly frequently, spending wet weekends tacking up and down a grey and choppy Thames with my parents in our small Mirror dinghy.
Since reaching adulthood, however, I have largely stayed on shore. The shipping forecast became a comforting blur of words to fall asleep to. The artistry of knots, the language of clouds and the gradations of gales were just something out of Swallows and Amazons.
I had always quite fancied setting sail again, though, and now, thanks to a new venture by Sunsail, there is an easy, and fairly cheap, way to swap city shoes for sea boots. After more than 35 years of running flotilla holidays in warmer waters, the company has launched its first UK flotilla break, in the Solent, with trips running through the summer into October.
Largely designed for those with some sailing experience (20 days on a yacht or a Royal Yaching Association skipper qualification is required) but not the confidence to head out on their own, flotillas allow nervous and rusty sailors to experiment with independent skippering and free sailing, with time for exploring on land, too.
You sail from port to port with the other yachts in the flotilla and a lead vessel, with a Sunsail crew, is always close at hand. For extra reassurance, you can also engage your own on-board skipper.
The most striking thing about sailing in a flotilla is the support and enthusiasm of the crew on the other boats. Sailing etiquette is nothing if not inclusive: woe betide the helmsman who passes another at sea without exchanging a wave and a cheery greeting. The same applies in the flotilla – just more so. With everyone at a different level, hollered words of encouragement from the other yachts are both useful and uplifting, while the advice and yarns exchanged during communal suppers in restaurants and pubs along the route are invaluable.
Such enforced mingling with strangers could, it is worth adding, be a mixed blessing. The week before my friends and I arrived, the group was apparently bubbling over with young couples and lively groups. Our crowd of four yachts, however, was a quieter affair, predominantly composed of older couples and young families. My friends and I had a skipper on our boat to teach us, but most yachts in flotillas are hired out to families or groups of friends, without a skipper.
As we sailed between Port Solent, the lovely Osborne Bay (where Queen Victoria liked to bathe), chic Poole, hectic Southampton, Lymington and, finally, Cowes – the spiritual home of sailing – our confidence increased.
And our fascination with sea lore blossomed. We spent our evenings at restaurants and pubs around the Solent, ranging from trendy to cosy – with some, like the Folly Inn on the Medina river, accessible only by sea (it runs a waterbus to bring those without their own keel up the river from Cowes) – perfecting our knot-tying skills on ropes spun out of paper napkins. As the wine flowed, we could be found reciting the different gale categories. By the time puddings arrived, we would be testing each other on weather patterns and how best to trim the sails depending on the direction of wind.
It seems amazing, given how rusty I was when I stepped onto the deck on my first day, but by the time I reached shore at the end of the week, the evenings spent reciting crewmanship lessons and days spent scampering over the boat putting them into practice had worked their magic.
Having excavated my teenage bent and enthusiasm for sailing, I am now confident that I could be a genuinely useful crew member to any skipper brave enough to take me out to sea. Even more thrillingly, with my RYA competent crew certificate under my belt, I am now half-way to achieving the day skipper qualification, which will enable me to hire a yacht, both here and abroad, without a skipper.
And for a girl who just a few short days earlier hadn't known her hitch from her bowline, let alone how to read the dark patches on the sea or work out where a low front was coming from, that's an achievement.
• Flotilla holidays depart Port Solent on 7, 14, 21 August and 23 October. A yacht with berths for eight people costs £1,699 for a week in August, £1,499 in October; but Guardian readers who quote GFLOT when booking can claim a reduced rate of £1,499 in August. Double berths are also available on the lead boat – phone for details (0844 463 6578, sunsail.co.uk). It will cost you £175 a day to have a skipper on board.
