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Yachting Monthly, Time Inc. (UK) Ltd, Pinehurst 2, Pinehurst Road, Farnborough Business Park,
Farnborough, Hampshire GU14 7BFWIN
The confession of the
month wins a floating
Standard Horizon
handheld VHF.
(UK residents only)http://www.standardhorizon.co.ukTHE CONFESSIONAL
OWN UP TO YOUR SAILING SINS
THE ENDA sinking feeling
Liz SaundersOur first sail of any distance was to the south
coast of Ireland, having travelled from Cardiff
Bay, motor-sailing to Dunmore East. We were
feeling very proud. The boat performed really
well, the engine had been overhauled and was
sounding good. All was well with the world.
Suddenly, something began to vibrate horribly
in the engine. Had we caught a lobster pot line?
We shut the engine down just in case and
anchored. Middle age had begun to catch up
with my husband and donning a wetsuit after
putting on weight took skill brute force and
clouds of talcum powder. Hubby jumped into the
water but floated, and couldn’t get far enough
under the boat. A weight belt to his midriff would
help. ‘Throw me a rope, I can lower myself down,’
he said confidently. Weights attached and rope
in hand, he dropped down into the water again.
With a splash, he plunged beneath the surface,
clutching the rope. Amid vigorous but ineffective
splashing, he began to look oddly panic stricken.
He was rapidly running out of rope and, wearing
10 kilos of lead, was sinking fast.
I confess that only then did I realise that I’d
not fastened my end of the rope to anything.
I just managed to grab the end of the rope
before it slithered overboard and made it
fast. A relieved, exhausted man in wetsuit and
weights clambered aboard whilst I tried to stop
laughing. As it turned out there was nothing
wrong with the prop. An engine mounting had
worked loose and my husband had needlessly
walked the plank. Lesson learned.
The big sleep
Richard PearceIt was around 0200 when I pulled up in my
taxi at the address in west Hove. My passenger,
a middle-aged gent, was already saying his
goodbyes at the door to a group of people
after what seemed to have been a very convivial
party. He got in and gave his destination as a
little village close to the coast a few miles east of
Brighton Marina. I hadn’t travelled far when I saw
in my mirror he was fast asleep on the back seat.
As I passed the Palace Pier, the sudden
‘bleep bleep bleep’ of my lifeboat pager alerted
me to a lifeboat callout, and the need to get
to the marina sharpish. I was first to arrive at
our boathouse and on answering the phone,
found our tasking was to a yacht that had run
aground under the cliffs just east of the marina.
Other crew arrived and soon we were
speeding off on our Atlantic 21 lifeboat. It was
a calm, foggy night and the yacht’s skipper
has tried to use his new GPS to find the marina
entrance but it had been set up with the wrong
datum and led him too far east.
We managed to tow him off the rocks but
he’d also somehow got a rope jammed round
his rudder and prop, so the tow back to the
marina was a slow process as the yacht kept
trying to turn to port.
On arriving back at the boathouse after a
couple of hours, one of the shore crew asked,‘Who’s the guy asleep in your car?
In the midst of the red mist that affects all
lifeboat crew when the pager bleeps, I had
totally forgotten my passenger. I carefully got
back into my taxi without waking him, turned
off the meter which was now over £50, and
gently drove to the address he had given me.
Arriving outside his house, I turned round
and gave him a nudge. ‘We’re here, mate,’ I said
jovially and gave him an estimate of what the
fare should have been.
Still in a dozy state, he paid without question,
but I could see that the early-morning sky, where
dawn was beginning to show, was causing him
a little confusion.
As I drove away, I pretended I hadn’t heard
him ask, ‘What time is it, mate?’