Yachting Monthly – May 2018

Romance in the rain

Peter Solly

I admit it. I was trying
to impress her. She was
my girlfriend visiting for the
weekend, and clearly the best
thing to do was to take her out on the
very old 24ft plywood catamaran I’d just
bought. It was December, raining, and for
some reason I’d left the dinghy outboard
on the boat. But no matter; I’d row us in
my other recent purchase – a rectangular
glassfibre dinghy, which was probably older
than I was. What could possibly go wrong?
The tide runs fast on the River Exe and
the catamaran was about 100 yards offshore,
on a mooring in the middle of the stream.
By the time we arrived, the wind and tide
were pushing strongly downriver. A simple
ferry-glide out would do it, I figured.
We set off, and as soon as we got into the
stream it became clear this was going to be
a difficult row. Despite my efforts, the cat got
further and further away from us. For three
quarters of an hour, I rowed my rectangular
bathtub as if my life depended on it.
Eventually, we managed to make the shore
a mile downstream from where we started.
It didn’t matter that it was a long muddy walk
back to the car: by this stage, just reaching
dry land felt like a major success.
She never did get out to the boat, and a
few weeks later the cheap rented mooring
chain parted and the catamaran was washed
up on a rocky shore and then written off by
the insurance company. But all was not lost:
she is now my wife.

Learning the hard way

Simon Lund

We’d never sailed a catamaran before – only
monohulls and boats without dinghy davits

• but we set off for a bareboat charter to
  Bora Bora anyway. Having arrived at the
  island of Raiatea and received a briefing
  on the boat, we were told that when making
  a passage from one island to another, we
  must remove the outboard from the tender.

We then had a one-hour lesson with a French

instructor to get used to handling the cat. ‘No,

no, no,’ she reassured us. ‘Do not worry.

Leave the outboard on, it will be fine.’

The next morning, off we went for a

passage with the dinghy in tow, crossing

between Raiatea and Huahine in a 20-knot

easterly trade wind that was kicking up 2m

seas. Two hours in and BANG! I looked back

to see the tender flipped over by a wave and

the red fuel tank disappear over the horizon.

We sheepishly called the charter base. The

‘engine on’ thing is only okay if the boat is

in the davits. We learned the expensive way.

Almost a muddy end

Richard Hope-Hawkins

Having just repainted the decks of our 35ft

ferrocement ketch Brimstone, one of Mike

Peyton’s old boats, I didn’t want to drag the

anchor chain across it and make a mess of

all my hard work. So, how else could I get

the anchor chain from the pontoon on to the

boat on my own, with no one around to help?

Then inspiration struck... I picked up one

end of the chain and began to loop it around

my neck like a giant necklace, as climbers

do with their ropes. It was getting heavy but

I reckoned I could cope with the full weight

of the chain for a few minutes.

It was only as I was midway through

stepping from the pontoon on to the boat

that I realised just how stupid I was being.

As the boat moved under my increased

weight, I tottered between success and

oblivion. Gravity and chance were on my

side that day and I landed with relief on

board, but visions of me slipping and being

buried head first in the mud at the bottom of

Liverpool Marina have haunted me ever since.

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