Sailing on His Deeds Are Dust

Deserted Diners

Thu, 28 Nov 2024 17:00:00 +0000

In 1991, six of us chartered our favourite yacht, Sea Tramp, and sailed over to Alderney. When we arrived on Saturday afternoon after a seventeen hour crossing, we were eager to tuck into any food more substantial than sandwiches and Cup-A-Soups. We picked a restaurant near the harbour and grabbed a table. The restaurant was divided into several rooms. Our room contained our table and a larger table which had been empty when we arrived, but was soon filled with a party of eight as we enjoyed our starters.

The main course arrived, along with several wine bottles. As the conversation continued apace, we quickly got through all the wine with plenty of food remaining. We looked around for our waitress in order to request more, but no one was around.

At this point we noticed that the larger table was now empty. We hadn’t seen the people leave, and they definitely hadn’t finished before us. Their starters appeared to be only half consumed, and our envious eyes spotted that their wine bottles were still full.

While waiting for our waitress to reappear, we caught some flashing lights through a frosted window. Perhaps a disco had started up and the other diners had disappeared to take a quick peek? We were left hanging for another five minutes before our waitress reappeared, looking a bit flustered.

She explained that a rather large lady among the group of eight had got up to visit the toilets, and on the way back had collapsed in the corridor, blocking it completely. No one had been able to get past until the ambulance arrived and took her away. The other diners had followed as well.

We listened intently to the waitress’s story, establishing that the lady’s condition was serious enough for it to be unlikely that her companions would return to finish the meal. When the waitress left the room, we thought that enough concern had been shown, so we swapped our empty wine bottles for their full ones and carried on.

Wish It Was Windy

Tue, 28 May 2024 09:47:00 +0100

I believe that water is for sailing on; not drinking.¹ If the water in question is the Solent, it’s not even for swimming in. I should know, I’ve tried it on a busy Saturday afternoon.

Our party that year was split across two yachts, and we decided to go for a race in the Solent. We agreed the route around some buoys north of Cowes and set sail on a sunny Saturday. Slowly. Really slowly. I was helming one of the yachts and, looking over the stern, I was convinced the wake was heading towards the front of the boat. I casually mentioned to the crew that we were going slowly enough for me to swim from the back to the front of the boat.

I was soon to wish that there had been enough wind to carry my words away. Dave took a quick look over the side and bet me I’d never make it.

Before you could say “jellyfish ahoy,” I’d stripped to my smalls and slipped over the side. Did I say slipped? I meant dive-bombed. By the time I’d surfaced, everyone on the yacht thought I’d spotted some pearls on the bottom. The yacht was five metres from me and my frantically inelegant front crawl couldn’t do anything to narrow the gap.

The yacht sailed on. Someone yelled that they’d circle back for me, but meanwhile I was just a small head bobbing in the busiest shipping lane in southern England. I could hear a humming sound … a menacing humming. As the large motorboat zoomed towards me, I found myself hoping that the pilot had been drinking enough to believe that there was a small crowd of us in the water.

Fortunately, they saw me soon enough to slow down. What’s more, they’d seen that my yacht was already circling back for me, so when the skipper asked if I needed any assistance, I decided that the least embarrassing way out was to pretend that the entire episode had been a planned ‘man overboard’ drill. Hoping that my face wouldn’t give the game away, I sent him on his way with the line “Thanks, but they’ve got to learn some time!”

I originally wrote this in 1998. My attitude to drinking water has improved since then! ↩︎

The Appearance of Seaworthiness

Sat, 20 Apr 2024 13:45:17 +0100

Years ago, I used to deliver yachts during the summer holidays. It was a great way to get a cheap holiday and explore a new place every night. We would sail the yacht Sea Tramp from its home on the Hamble to wherever most people wanted to charter it from over the summer, which could be Cornwall, the Channel Islands or Brittany, for example.

Sea Tramp was a 50′ ketch made of 25 tonnes of ferro-concrete. “A concrete boat?” people exclaim, but concrete is pretty impervious to corrosion. The owner had intended to take it around the world on his retirement but, until then, he would tweak the equipment every year. We would get on board to find that the anchor had been replaced, with chain of a pitch that didn’t quite fit the winch, so it would slip, or a new hole had been punched in the superstructure to allow cabling for the latest gadget.

Our aim this time was to deliver the yacht to its summer berth at Falmouth. We set out from the Solent, rounded Portland Bill and were looking to cross Lyme Bay, some 90-odd nautical miles, overnight.

During the night passage, we were occupied with fixing an engine problem when we discovered that the bilges of the boat were damper than they should be. A split water tank (repurposed from the owner’s farm) had dumped its entire contents. Turning back would involve facing the turbulent waters of Portland Race again, so the skipper decided we would carry on towards Brixham.

We reached Brixham at 3 a.m. and anchored off, because threading our way amongst tiny plastic boats in a waterlogged concrete battering ram with the aid of torches and bleary eyes didn’t seem like a smart move.

The next morning, we had a lot of work to do. We had to scout out the harbour to see where we could moor in order to pick up some water. We inflated both dinghies, fitted them with outboards, and Jim and I started making trips into the harbour.

We had both arrived back on board and were grabbing a coffee when we saw a large orange semi-rigid inflatable approaching at speed from outside the harbour. As it came alongside we could see it contained four men and a dog. Two men and the dog jumped on board and introduced themselves as Customs & Excise officers. We answered their questions about our movements and they seemed satisfied and ready to leave when the officer in charge asked if they could run their dog around below, as he’d not been off the boat all morning. All morning? It was only 9.30!

Nevertheless, the only correct answer to this is “Yes,” as a “no” leads to them taking your boat alongside the quay and dumping its contents on the quayside, if they wish.

As the dog had a happy, waggy-tail, sniff and rummage, we enquired of the officer why they were interested. It turns out that anchoring off a port in the middle of the night and making runs ashore in fast outboards at first light is exactly the behaviour of drug smugglers, and our large ketch made, in his words, “a good sea-going boat.”

The customs men were left quite perplexed as, at the mention of seaworthiness, we all recalled the spluttering engine and panicked bailing of the previous night and collapsed with laughter.