ALMOST HOME
Betty II soared up the Downs in fl at,
sheltered water, the houses of Deal
staring at us from the beach, and I set
a course for the B2 buoy which takes
you inside the Brake Sand for the
Ramsgate Channel.
On and on we went, but the buoy I could not see. I trained
the binoculars to the north, expecting to see the friendly little
conical standing up against the nether regions of Ramsgate.
But to no avail.
‘What’s that?’ said Glum pointing west.
‘That’s the buoy, they must have moved it.’
We now had to harden up, but only just managed to get
to it without a tack.
‘So is the chart out of date?’ asked Glum innocently.
Yes, it was, as we later discovered... But if I’d been using
the tablet...!
Ramsgate was empty and forlorn, the pontoons rocking
gently on the swell, colonised by huge gulls, which had
marked out their territory with communal evacuation
of their remarkable digestive tracts.
‘It’s the biggest pub in the UK,’ said the barmaid at the
Royal Temple Yacht Club about the recently opened Royal
Victoria Pavilion, and so we felt obliged to trudge through
the night time streets to the doors of this former edifi ce
of Victorian, and Edwardian seaside distraction.
It is now a magnifi cent addition to the town: the ale is real,
the heartiness provided by excellent food, a place so lovingly
and sumptuously restored that even those in mastic-fouled
tracksuits are bathed in refl ected glory so that they appear
as though they are passengers on a great Cunard liner.
We fl ew up to the North Foreland the following morning
with a fresh south-west wind over Betty’s port quarter, but as
we rounded the cape into the Thames, we came hard on the
wind and had to reef right down, furl the staysail completely
and part furl the jib. However, even with the jib rolled away
to half its capacity, it was still set too high, so leaving the helm
with Glum, I went forward to change it for a small storm jib.
On a narrow foredeck, the furling line was spinning off the
Wykeham Martin furler, shackle pins were droppingoverboard,
the pliers were sliding down to leeward, waves were slopping
over me and the bowsprit was slapping the sea – it was a
tedious job. When fi nally I pulled the infernal WM roller back
out along the bowsprit, the storm jib unfurled before I had
planned: it leapt and jumped like a phantom in chains,
whipping the bowsprit like a fi shing rod and what’s more,
snatching the outhaul off the sheave on the bowsprit end
jamming it solidly between sheave and spar before I had
managed to get the tack out to the bitter end.
So with a poorly set storm jib just halfway along the
bowsprit and the heavily reefed mainsail now so low as to
be rubbing on the sprayhood, we crabbed miserably along
the north Kent coast, the weather-going tide providing watery
hurdles for Betty to jump, staggering her progress until dusk
saw us enter the Swale.
It was dark by the time we moored up alongside a Dutch
barge at Hollowshore, but we’d saved our tide: it was not
quite high water. We negotiated the props of the laid-up
boats at Tester’s yard and entered the warmth and calm of
the Shipwright’s Arms where the governor apologised that
there was no food. All the pasties which his chef made fresh
each day had gone, he said, but later, as we sat windblown
and dripping over packets of peanuts, he announced he’d
‘found’ two pasties in the fridge.
‘They’re all the way from Cornwall,’ he added.
Too hungry to care about the
anomaly of homemade pasties
coming from Bodmin, or the
fact that they were £6.99 each,
we fell upon the fare.
In wan sunshine, we sailed through
the Swale next day and by nightfall,
Betty II was back home, slowly falling
over with the retreating ebb tide on
the mudfl ats at Leigh-on-Sea.BY NIGHTFALL, BETTY II
WAS ON THE MUDFLATS
AT LEIGH-ON-SEA
BETTY II
Designed by Harry Smith and built by
Cole Wiggins & Wiggins at Leigh-on-Sea
in 1921, Betty II is 25ft (7.62m) on deck
and 3 2ft (9. 7 5m) with the bowsprit set.
She has an 8ft beam, 2ft 7 in (0.82m)
with the centreplate raised and 5ft
(1.52m) with it lowered.Above: Home at
last on the mud
at LeighHOME WATERS