07 January 2008 - The Daily Mail - Andrew Yates

Here's an idea to ruin a happy marriage: jump into a small sailing dinghy with your wife when neither of you can really sail and set out in a rapidly strengthening wind, allowing her to take the helm.

Before you could say 'man overboard', we were scything through jagged waves at a dangerous angle in a howling gale. Above the wind, I shouted at Rose: 'Steer over there!' But she screamed back: 'No, it'll make the boat tip over.' Then she added: 'I don't like this. You take over the steering.'

How do two woefully inexperienced sailors in a tiny boat scudding out to sea and bashed on every side by breakers swop places without being washed into the ocean? That's what I asked her anyway, and she replied by letting go of the tiller.

By slithering on the floor while the boat went round in circles and the sails above us roared and flapped, we managed to change positions. I grabbed the tiller, took command, ignored my wife's warnings as I turned the boat round - and we immediately capsized. Going under, I heard the words: 'You fool!'

She was right, of course. I was the epitome of the vainglorious novice sailor - incompetent and dangerously over-confident. I had taken a short beginner's course in dinghy sailing a year earlier and so considered myself a master of the waves.

The rest of the family — Rose and our two children Tom, ten, and Chloe, eight — had taken the Royal Yachting Association level one course, too, when we were on holiday at a Mark Warner resort in Greece.

But that qualification had not gone to their heads as mine had. They had none of my captain's swagger now that we were embarking on the RYA's level two course at another Mark Warner resort, in Corsica.

We knew the Mark Warner drill. Having insisted that they would never do so, the children disappeared for the week into 'Kidz Clubs' where they played games and learned to water-ski, making friends with those whom they ran about with in grunting, screaming packs.

Gratefully relieved of them, the parents lounged by the pool or the beach, played tennis, joined aerobics classes and took to the sea in boats and windsurfers, usually at a safe distance from the children.

I ran over a young windsurfer the year before, but he was so polite he apologised as he sank. Most of the holidaymakers at the resort were middle-class professionals who didn't leave the compound during their entire holiday. Lawyers, engineers, doctors, accountants, company directors, we met them all.

But rather than stay on for a second week, as many did, we gave up its comforting embrace. Not for us the buffet restaurant that catered for British palates and children's demands for chips, pasta and white bread rolls on the same plate; the friendly nurse who took emergency action when our daughter squirted suntan lotion into her eye; or the flotilla of safety boats that came to the rescue when I capsized with such force that my mast became stuck in the seabed.

No, we wanted to explore the island. So, clutching our sailing certificates, we hired a car and took a small villa in the south, near the old city of Porto Vecchio.

To Read the remainder of this feature, click to view the online version