Definition: Mutual trust and friendship among people who spend a lot of time together.

We hold strangers’ hair back as they are sea sick.

We allow strangers to hold our life jackets as we stand precariously on the highest surface to tie on the preventer (to stop the boom flying across the cockpit and knocking someone on the head).

We rely on strangers to keep the bow into the wind as we stand on one foot on a step up the mast reefing (reducing) the main sail.

We hope that these people are reliable and know what they are doing, but as an instructor you naturally have novices on board, and as such it’s a question of evaluating the strengths of those around, and using them to the best interest of all. Unfortunately, as the most experienced, you are the one who has to take the riskiest position, and from there teach, inform, assist, and make sure not to scare.

When you have experienced people on board it’s a different matter entirely, and I have been lucky enough to sail with very experienced sailors many times. Then it’s all about working together. Everyone recognises who the most experienced is on board, and unless it’s a sinking situation, quite frequently the less experienced will volunteer to take the worst of the jobs. There’s preservation in mind.

But when the worst happens, all the jobs are bad. And everyone complains, wishes they could sub out, in their head. In my experience no-one does, aside from in a sarcastic, expletive-ridden manner, before doing whatever it was they didn’t want to do. You buck up. You go to the mast whatever the weather. You don’t sleep. You eat an apple or a baguette if someone throws one at you after you’ve been at the helm for five and a half hours.

You’re grimy, you’re salty, you’re hoping it doesn’t rain on top of everything else, but you’re part of a team and when there’s only a handful of you on board, simply being the person who is asked to hold the back of someone else’s life jacket is a huge responsibility.

And from that trust grows a certain type of friendship.

A bond forged quickly and firmly, and cemented over an after-parking drink, no matter what time you park, because you’ve experienced something together, made memories which may stand alone, but from an experience where you were not.