Being a bit of a daydreamer is a great quality to have if you’re an author: first time it’s ever come in handy in my life. Generally speaking though, it’s not something you look for in a sailor.

I always have to start any blog posts about the sea and sailing with a caveat explaining that I’m not actually a particularly good dinghy sailor: it’s just something I love.

Oh how embarrassing then to have an entire series of eminent authors (and me) writing posts dedicated to sailing. I’m starting to feel like I’m on one of those radio confession slots now. But, dear reader, I have to admit that I am such an inadequate sailor that it nearly done for me, and another unfortunate.

I’ve blocked most of the details from my mind but suffice to say it was a summer in the 1980’s; I was trying to learn how to be a slightly-less-average sailor courtesy of a UKSA week-long course, and was dutifully tacking across Cowes harbour in a Wayfarer with some poor boy from London.

It had not been an auspicious pairing this young man and I. He was shy, I was awkward, the weather was freezing: we didn’t get off to a brilliant start. And after we’d spent 30 minutes in the mouth of Wootton creek – in the water and the pouring rain – trying (and failing) to right our capsized boat, relations were on the downhill slope.

But what do you know, come the last day the weather turned, we were a bit more confident and things started to feel much better. ‘How lovely,’ I thought to myself as I sat at the helm. It was Dinghy Week and there were lots of other boats on the water, the sun was shining. ‘Isn’t this pretty?’ I expect I was thinking to myself, possibly whilst playing a 1980s tune in my head by way of a soundtrack.

Lovely green water, clear blue sky, I wonder if I’ll get a tan today…

Until suddenly my crewmate’s hand grabbed mine angrily and tacked our Wayfarer violently.

How rude.

He was just in time to prevent us ploughing into the Cowes car ferry. We didn’t swap phone numbers when he left.

So there you go. The only constructive advice I have for you on sailing is that daydreaming is a Bad Idea. Which just leaves time for me to share this joke, much beloved of school children on the Isle of Wight.

Q. What’s brown, steaming and comes out of Cowes backwards?

A. The Cowes ferry

(I’m showing my age a bit here. Because the Cowes ferry is no longer brown, and doesn’t steam any more. It is, however, still big. And it’s still not advisable to daydream whilst sailing near it in a dinghy.)

A Wayfarer (not very big).

The Cowes Ferry (very big).

If you’d like to know more about why I chose to put sailing and the sea at the heart of the Verity Gallant stories, why not read this post on Nayu’s Reading Corner? Thank you very much to Lauren at Random House for arranging and to @nayuleska for hosting.

Melanie Welsh is the creator of Verity Gallant’s adventures in The Mistress of the Storm and Heart of Stone.  Click here to read an extract from Melanie’s new story!