Wow, okay.

You know how sailing, especially cruising, is meant to be about taking it slow, drifting along with the wind and sea while sipping on a rum and coke? Well, that’s almost how our 2025 season started… but not exactly.

The transition from land life to living on a floating piece of plastic is always a bit peculiar, even after doing this for, what, five years now? This year, however, felt especially manic. Our version of the January blues always seems to result in an adventure or two that feels like a good idea at the time, but in reality turns life into chaos. This year, in January, we thought it would be a great idea to do our RYA Yachtmaster Offshore exam. Not that we really needed it, but it’s something we’ve always wanted to do—and who knows, maybe it’ll lead to something? So, without much thought, we booked another session with Canary Sail, who we’ve sailed with before.

Little did we know this would mean cramming a trip to visit family in Germany, getting rid of most of our furniture (oh, did I mention we’re completely gutting and refurbishing our little flat?), and preparing for a tough week of sailing exams—all in basically three weeks. And at the end of it? We had two days to get ready to move back onto the boat for six months.Sounds manic? It does now. But at the time, it somehow felt like a good idea as we love being busy!

Packing up and emptying the apartment was hard and a bit annoying, but nothing compared to our week in Tenerife doing the Yachtmaster exam. A big part of the test is theory, and our knowledge of sound signals, day shapes, and navigation rules was at least as dusty as the carpets we were trying to get rid of at home. “No problem,” we thought. We’ll cram on the flight to the Canaries, and once we’re there, we’ll get time to refresh our memories. Turns out things went a bit differently.

To be fair, we did get time to refresh our theory but it was mostly between midnight and 2 a.m., after sailing in 30 knots all day and wrestling with charts and tide tables for the passage plan we needed for the exam.The trip consisted of three days of prep and two days of exams. The prep was meant to refresh our RYA sailing drills, but really it just gave us anxiety and heartburn. There was a lot in there we’d never done; sailing onto and off moorings, blind navigation, sailing onto an anchor, man overboard under sail, the whole lot.

The wind blew like mad all week, and the schedule was brutal: up at 5 a.m., get the boat ready, sail in wild conditions, back by 8 p.m., then cram theory until 1 or 2 a.m., and repeat the next day. Luckily, we bumped into Martin—a sailing instructor we sailed with ten years ago (!) in the Canaries. He calmed us down a bit. He knew the examiner and said he was a reasonable guy, which helped a lot. And how cool to bump into Martin again by total chance after all that time!

He was absolutely right. The examiner was not only reasonable — he was actually fun to sail with. After the madness of the prep week, the actual exam felt like a cruise holiday. Well, not quite - we were still nervous - but it all felt much calmer and more composed.By the end of the week, we were both officially RYA-certified Yachtmasters! Looking back, it was a mad week, but nevertheless it was great fun—and the crew we were sailing with were fantastic people.

Coming back to the UK, we felt proud and accomplished but we had exactly 2.5 days to empty the apartment, pack our things, and head back to Gatwick to catch one of the earliest flights to Preveza. What followed was a frantic few days getting Bini back in the water and switching back into cruising mode… but those adventures will have to wait for the next post.