Standing in line with a dozen other people on a narrow gravel shoreline, I looked out at the chilly expanse of Ullswater beyond the instructor as she completed our briefing.

‘As you can see, the wind is strong and the lake’s quite rough today,’ Liz said. ‘Whatever you do, please don’t go out of the shelter of this bay.’

For me, it was a rare summer at home in England. Having committed to a sailing and climbing trip to Tierra del Fuego for the following southern summer on a friend’s ocean going yacht, it seemed wise to use some of the intervening time to get some practical sailing experience. My wife Jane and I had enrolled on a course at Howtown Outdoor Centre on the eastern side of Ullswater — one of the Lake District’s largest and most beautiful stretches of water. By spending every Tuesday evening over a six-week period out on the lake we hoped to pick up the basic principles of sailing Toppers — small one-man fibreglass dinghies fitted with a rudder and single sail.

On our first lesson the previous week it had been completely calm and impossible to put classroom theory into practice down on the water. We all simply drifted listlessly on the lake, paddling our boats back in with our hands at the end of the session. But today, as I waded into the water pushing the small dinghy in front of me, I felt nervous. Despite it being evening, the wind was showing no sign of abating and there were good-sized waves not far from the shoreline. The water beyond the small bay we had been instructed to sail around looked rougher still.

I climbed aboard and tried to make myself comfortable, but the wind quickly filled the sail and the boat rapidly accelerated. In no time I was struggling to hold on to the cord fixed to the end of the boom with one hand while trying to control the tiller with the other. I was soon skipping over waves as the yacht slewed across the water in an arc, feeling like it was about to capsize. Then the wind suddenly dropped, leaving the sail flapping noisily. My forward movement halted as abruptly as it had started. I sat and puzzled as to what had happened, trying to work out the direction of the wind and how I should set up the boat. It was not easy, there were so many different things to deal with. By moving the rudder I managed to get wind back into the sail, which produced another spurt of forward movement. However, it soon died like the first. This was baffling.

I looked around to see how the others were coping. One or two seemed to be doing quite well but most were also making faltering progress. The instructors moved between the dinghies in a small launch offering advice and encouragement. I persevered, cautiously trying to not go fully with the wind. Eventually I made some reasonable passages in a straight line, only to lose momentum when I tried to take a different tack.

I began to feel frustrated and reasoned that it would be best to simply throw caution to the wind — literally. I turned and let the sail fill completely, then held the dinghy on that course. I skimmed along, bouncing over the bigger waves, leaning out to maintain stability. This was more like it, I told myself as I rapidly headed out of the sheltered bay and into deeper water. The waves got larger, the wind gusting ever stronger. All of a sudden the cord attached to the end of the boom was plucked from my hand and the boat turned over, flinging me into the water. I surfaced almost immediately, gasping from the shock of the coldness. The lifejacket was doing its job well, keeping me at the surface with my head out of the water, so I floated for a while and took stock. The boat was upturned nearby and I was a long way out into the lake.

Having got my breath back, I swam a few strokes and regained the dinghy. We had been instructed how to right a capsized boat, however that had been in shallow water during the becalmed first lesson. I tried grabbing the keel and using my bodyweight to roll the boat upright; it would not move and after a couple of attempts I slumped back into the water. Then I dived down and tried pushing the mast up from below. The wind was stronger now and waves were breaking over the hull. It was obvious that I simply did not have the strength or technique necessary to get the dinghy back upright in such conditions. Embarrassingly, all I could do was wait to be rescued.

As it turned out I was not the only one having difficulties. Back in the bay others had overturned and the instructors were shuttling dinghies and clients back to the pier with two launches. My wetsuit had warmed and I felt quite comfortable. I relaxed, hanging limply from the side of the boat and waited my turn. Eventually, the launches made their way out to me.

‘Having trouble are we?’ Liz asked, as the rescue flotilla arrived.

‘Couldn’t get the damn boat back upright,’ I explained rather feebly.

‘So we can see.’

I passed her the line from the bow of my dinghy and climbed up the steps on the back of Liz’s launch as ordered. The rest of the group stood waiting on the pier while my rescue was completed and boat retrieved. Some were shivering with cold by the time we returned. They did not look impressed with my excursion. We got the dinghies ashore and stripped them down. Then I walked silently back to the centre, feeling guilty for the trouble I had caused.

The lessons over the following weeks were less eventful and highly enjoyable. Good weather accompanied by breezes out on the lake allowed everyone to progress without too much difficulty, or me capsizing. The final session promised something special — a chance to use our new skills in a race down the lake to a designated buoy and back to the pier at the outdoor centre. Everybody tried to take the best lines and tack at the right moment to optimise speed and distance covered. Racing was fun, it made you think about the classroom theory and how to apply it practically. All too quickly we were all back at the pier. I was sad that the course had come to an end — it had been a very pleasant way to spend a summer’s evening each week — but now I could look forward to transferring my newly acquired skill to a much larger yacht later in the year.

Back in the centre everyone changed out of wetsuits and made their way into one of the classrooms for a final de-briefing. After congratulating the group for their performance out on the lake, Liz began asking people what their aspirations for sailing were. A retired couple planned to buy a yacht to sail on Ullswater; a teenage boy said how much he had enjoyed the experience and wanted to come on a more advanced course the following summer.

‘And what about you Simon?’

‘In six months time I’m going to fly to Ushuaia in Argentina, get on an ocean going yacht and sail along the Beagle Channel to the head of a remote fjord. Then I’m going to go ashore and climb an unclimbed mountain.’ It felt like a slightly ridiculous boast under the circumstances, but it was true.

‘Well, that’s very ambitious,’ Liz said dryly, before adding ‘Good luck with it all.’

For more than three hours the plane had hugged Argentina’s east coast on the long journey south. I was travelling to Tierra del Fuego in the company of Jane and two friends: my climbing partner Andy Parkin and Elaine Bull whose sister Celia would be skippering the all-important yacht for our ambitious expedition. Gazing down on the desolate coastline, I recalled how nine years earlier on a trip to Cerro Torre I had travelled down this huge country by coach. The journey had taken the best part of two tiring, monotonous days. Flying was definitely worth the small extra cost and I wondered about my previous state of mind.

Eventually, the coastline gave way to open sea and I assumed that we must have left the mainland and were making the short crossing over the eastern end of the Magellan Straits to Tierra del Fuego. Land soon reappeared below and I felt that familiar surge of excitement; a sense of mounting anticipation that had swept over me at moments like this ever since my first trips to Asia years earlier. Cloud briefly obscured the view, then as the plane began to descend I started to see glimpses of mountains and glaciers, lakes and rivers. Now we were over sea again, but with land nearby on either side. This was wild country, unlike anything I had seen before. What really caught my attention was the dense, dark forest. All the low-lying land was blanketed in the stuff. The mainland of Tierra del Fuego in Argentina lay on the right and Isla Navarino in Chile to the left, directly below stretched the Beagle Channel. With the plane on its final approach, Ushuaia suddenly appeared. Its setting could hardly be more dramatic, the city crowded around a small harbour with buildings extending up surrounding hillsides towards mountains above. I caught a glimpse of a yacht making its way into the bay. It all flashed by and out of sight as we landed at the airport built on a spit of land projecting into the channel. All the tourist literature refers to this place as Fin del Mundo — the end of the world. It certainly felt like it.

We took a short taxi ride into town, found a room in a backpackers’ hostel, then eagerly made our way down to the harbour. It was a fair walk round to the yacht club, which lies at the far end of a causeway splitting the western end of the bay. It’s an exposed spot and we walked heads bowed as the wind accelerated across the bay, blowing plumes of dust from the un-metalled road. As we approached the yacht club we could see a boat heading for the pier.

‘It’s Celia!’ Elaine...