The Midsumma Festival starts in early January and continues for the rest month. The aim is to celebrate queer culture and boy do they know how to celebrate! There’s a whole host of outstanding events and it has certainly stamped itself as a highlight on the ever expanding Melbourne festival scene.

This was the first time, however, that I have come across a free sailing day! The details of the event were scant, with a plain text email highlighting that we should arrive at the Altona yacht club (I wasn’t aware Altona had a yacht club or that Altona was in fact by the bay) at 10am.

For city boys like me who have never sailed before I had images of this:

Photo via SuperYacht

…as such I turned up in jeans and a nice shirt.  Little did I know that we were not in fact going for a champagne tinged sail across the bay, but rather:

I knew I was in trouble when an elderly chap gave me a bewildered up and down and asked if I “planned to sail in those”. Okay, so shoes off, jeans rolled up, dreams of taking awesome photos of myself lazing out on a sail boat, dashed. It was time to get serious and I needed to learn fast. Thankfully/mercifully I had a forgiving captain. He showed me the ropes (literally) and yelled out ‘duck’ at the appropriate moment.

Despite my overwhelming incompetence I did smirk a little at all the other city folk who arrived later donning similar attire.

It certainly was a different event and gave me a taste of something that I have never done before. Big props to the Midsumma festival organisers for thinking outside the box!