Above, Small and
perfectly formed
Betty II heads out of
Portsmouth harbourleak had been candidly mentioned to me by the boat’s vendor.
In fact, he had abandoned a thrash to the Isles of Scilly because
of it, putting into Falmouth then returning home to Keyhaven,
where I had picked the boat up.
Automatic bilge pumps are another thing I don’t like.
Again they are a stopgap, an ad-hoc measure merely delaying
the inevitable. This coming season, I vowed to get to the
bottom of the mystery leak.
But for now, we hurtled on through fog until the brown-
stained white cliffs in which Newhaven nestles emerged
through the mist. I could see the tide was almost done.
‘We’d have made Eastbourne if I’d got up an hour earlier,’
I said to Glum, ‘but at least we don’t have to lock in here
at Newhaven.’
We opened up the port inside the giant western arm,
which has protected the haven from the south-west since
the time of paddle-steamer ferries, gybed over and shot in.
The following day, we rounded Beachy Head and espied
a gaggle of ramblers in a conga-like line walking down the
cliff edge. I was pleased for them that the wind was onshore.
Pleased for us too, as the breeze pushed us up to Dungeness
in 4.5 hours. By the time we doubled that shingle peninsular,
it was Force 6 and we had a following sea of 5ft breakers.
Betty was surfi ng, dipping her bowsprit in the seas, and her
low freeboard put us close to the hissing breakers.
Ben had cut away 3ft of aft deck to make the cockpit longer.
As a popular fi gure on the Solent classic race circuit, he had
freely admitted to me that he was a party animal who liked
to entertain on board, but the boat’s openness unnerved me.
Clearly it had unnerved Ben too, as when it came to sailing
her across to Brittany, he had constructed a deal ‘lid’ to
fi t over the cockpit complete with a coaming attached
with wing nuts. I’m afraid I left the contraption in a skip at
Gosport as I felt that one good sea would wash it overboard.
Fortunately, her buoyant sections never saw any water come
aboard, but reinstating the aft deck was now another thing on
my list. Once round Dungeness, the seas eased and the spring
fl ood kept up its good work surging us towards Dover, the
western entrance of which we reached at dusk just as the wind
was increasing further.
After receiving permission from Dover Harbour Control,
we luffed round the sea-buffeted stone pier, a welter of
backwash sweeping the boat’s decks, dropped the gaff
mainsail, rolled away the jib and motored our way gratefully
into Granville Dock.
That night, we dined at the Royal Cinque Ports Yacht Club, a
glorious old establishment from another century which sports
a reminder of Britain’s proximity to hostile intent in the form
of a chart of Dover Harbour published by Germany’s
Kriegsmarine. This historic document is hung, with bulldog
phlegmatism, in the gents!
That night and all the next day, the fi rst gale of the winter
howled through the masts of Dover’s yachts, driving horizontal
rain into the white cliffs hanging over us.
The fuss was all over in 24 hours and we departed Dover
through the eastern entrance, keeping to the north of the ferry
channel as advised by the voice of harbour control and rounding
the South Foreland in autumn sunshine under full sail.HOME WATERS