I want to get back on the water after an accident.

That is what mental training is made for. We go back in steps you set yourself and can stop at any time: first the pontoon, then the boat at the pontoon, then the harbour, then the wider water. No throwing yourself in at the deep end, no proving your courage, no pressure of dates.

There is one boundary. If nightmares, flashbacks or hyperarousal come with it, that is to say signs of trauma, it belongs in treatment rather than training. That is not a refusal, it is the order of things: that first, then us.