Illustration: Neil SingletonCOLUMNSJANUARY 2016 31NICK BURNHAM: The weather. It’s a national obsession for a reason – it never
plays ball, it’s impossible to predict and by Jove it can create some spectacular daysTHE BORN AGAIN
BOAT OWNER
T
hat’s it – I’m selling the
boat and giving up boating.
My first full season afloat
and it’s been rubbish- mainly due to the
consistently poor British
‘summer’ (in inverted
commas because it wasn’t
really a summer at all, was it?).
It got off to a vaguely promising start in April - the day I launched Smuggler’s Blues was
near perfect; blue skies and calm seas. An
omen, I thought. Since then, apart from the
odd snatched day it has been one long painful
slog to try and plan around strong winds or
rain showers or just biting cold miserable
greyness. Interspersed with days where
boating got cancelled due to a poor forecast
that turned out (once other plans have been
made) to be a reasonable day. The Met Office
is about 20 miles from me in Exeter – do they
never look out of the window?
Don’t get me wrong, it’s not been a
complete washout. We had a great trip out
on the annual South West Sports Boat Rally - about 20 boats in convoy from Brixham to
Dartmouth together. The Pass The Baton
event later (definitely not timed and therefore
not a race or time trial for the purposes of
insurance – oh no) was great fun if a little
hairy – we retired early from that one!
Oh, and we were blessed with dolphins this
year. We discovered that a pod like to fish
around Berry Head and that if we waited
around long enough we stood a good chance
of spotting them. So good, in fact, that at one
point we were running at about an 80%
success rate. We’d motor upstream of
whichever way the tide was running, switch
off the engine and just drift back down - eyes peeled. Eventually two or three would
appear, surfacing silently and breathing
gently – absolutely magical. Sometimes, if
there was no sign of them, I’d try playing
some music to see if that enticed them. My
theory that dolphins enjoy a bit of Taylor Swift
sadly remains unproven however.
And although it was really hard to plan,
which was frustrating, we had a few great
It was another sunny day, at least until
late afternoon. We’d have been fi ne if
we’d not detoured to see the dolphins and
got caught in a monsoon on the way back
event too. I moored Smuggler’s Blues on the
visitor berths opposite Torquay’s wet pits the
night before; come the day we were joined by
friends on board while more friends arrived by
boat, rafting out five deep and enjoying the
spectacle of the incredible offshore racers
rumbling in. After lunch on board, a few of us
blasted out to Turn One to spectate. Fifteen
minutes later we were rewarded with the sight
of over a dozen raceboats bearing down on us
at over 70mph before banking around the
turn buoy and howling past us into the
distance. Just awesome!
But other than that, and a few other
brilliant days or evenings on the water, it’s
been hopeless. Well, mostly hopeless.
Well, actually we managed to clock up over
100 running hours. Maybe I’ll give it another
year after all...trips out with friends too. My good friend Sean
and the new (and lovely) lady in his life came
round to Dartmouth for the Regatta Air Show,
which was pretty spectacular – the sun shone
that day amazingly. We returned the next day
to watch the classic parade and get some
photos of White Mouse II on procession (MBY
November 2015). It rained a bit, but we just
sheltered in the cosy cabin (or ‘little house’
as Andrea likes to call it) till it passed.
We did the Dawlish Air Show too, taking an
aircraft-mad family friend who loved the
experience of being directly beneath the
display, and it was another sunny day, at least
until late afternoon. We’d have been fine if
we’d not detoured to see the dolphins and got
caught in a monsoon on the way back.
In fact come to think of it the sun shone for
the Cowes-Torquay-Cowes Classic powerboatNot even a barometer
can accurately predict
our ‘summer’