In which Trevor Clifton describes some of the skills needed to sail out of harbour  

We sailed everywhere. No engines was the rule. That was when you could tie up on harbour walls. It’d be a bit more difficult these days when everyone parks in marinas.
We ran the courses on Contessa 28s, usually with a crew of five: one instructor, one potential skipper and three Competent Crew students to a boat.
On the last day of a five-day course the instructors would swap boats to get a second opinion on the crews’ competence, particularly of the trainee skippers.
And this was boat swap day.
We’d moored in Marstel harbour, Denmark; a narrow, rectangular shaped harbour, with a long, north/south quay on the western side; the entrance is a thirty-metre gap in the northern wall.
The wind was blowing from the north – straight in through the entrance.
One by one the boats beat up the harbour, aiming for the northwest corner where they tacked onto port, bore away a little to pick up speed along the northern wall, then hardened up to pinch out through the entrance.
I watched the boat on which I’d been instructing with interest.
They beat up to the wall well enough, tacked, eased the sheets, picked up a bit of speed and turned closer to the wind at the entrance, only they didn’t sheet in. I could see the sails flapping. Unable to clear the entrance, and with nowhere to turn they ran into the old tractor tyres hanging against the wall at the far side of the entrance.
Two of the crew ran up to the foredeck and pushed the bow away from the tyres. The wind blew the boat sideways, back towards the harbour, the crew kept the bow away from the wall until they were clear.
Still beam on to the wind, the boat shot forward and grounded on the shallow bank in the northeast corner of the harbour. They were lusty lads and it was a sunny day in summer; one of them jumped over the side, got himself to the front of the boat, put his shoulder under the bow and pushed, she was free. She sailed off down the harbour minus that one member of the crew; he managed to climb back onto the wall.
Their second attempt to get out of the harbour was much the same as the first, except that this time, when they rammed the wall, the pulpit got stuck in one of the tyres, too tightly for their man on the wall to push them off. Another brave member of the crew leapt ashore. Between the two of them, pushing the pulpit with their feet, they managed to disengage the boat from the tyre. She bore away, filled, and sailed off down the harbour again, now minus two of her crew.
On their third attempt they sailed out through the harbour mouth with millimetres to spare. As she cleared the pier head the two stranded crew members leapt for the shrouds as the boat sailed by. And made it.