Chapter 21 All Stations South
Shoal Waters is essentially a creature of the east coast marshlands where her twelve-inch draft with the plate up and lowering mast enable her to get to places beyond the reach of other craft. I suspected that there must be similar delights in the Solent area and the fiftieth anniversary celebrations at Dunkirk tied up logically with such a trip. We cut short our annual visit to the Broads in 1990 and returned to Heybridge to prepare for a long cruise, leaving on the evening tide on Saturday the 19th of May. The wind blew from the northeast so it was a beat out of the River Blackwater before turning south to run down the Rays’n channel where we grounded for the rest of the night. With the flood next day it was an easy run south into the Crouch and on under the lifting bridge at Havengore to reach the outer Thames. The wind was fair for Dover but I lost my nerve off the Red Sand Tower when it began to harden, for I guessed that there would soon be a vicious lop building up off the North Foreland. Thus we spent the rest of the day enjoying warm sunshine in the East Swale. In fact we were trapped there until Wednesday and took the opportunity to visit Faversham, Windmill Creek and Conyer South Deep. Thursday brought lighter winds, almost too light, but by sunset Shoal Waters sat on the sand, deep in Pegwell Bay south of Ramsgate like a fat contented duck.
When the tide returned in the small hours, I moved out into the deeper water of the River Stour and left at 0600hrs under full sail including topsail. The direct route is east of the Goodwin Sands but I don’t like such sands under my lee and steered through the Downs to sound round the southern edge to the South Goodwin light vessel where we took in the topsail. Another reason was that the `Little Ships` were leaving from Dover and we expected them to overtake us. We hoped to make three or four knots while they were to do six. In fact we made five knots with the help of the tide and they made four knots by declining such help. Once across the shipping lanes, which we crossed at right angles, we headed up the French Coast over the last of the west bound tide, making surprisingly good progress. When it turned, we put in one reef as a rare old lop built up quickly but I confess that I never realised how rough it was until I read other peoples` accounts of the voyage that day! Nevertheless, we were pleased to turn into Dunkirk at 1515 hrs where the tidal marina fitted us up with a fine handy berth. I bailed out the cockpit with a sponge as Joy prepared a meal and then we started the long wait for the `Little ships` who gradually assembled in the big ship lock from 1930 hrs instead of the inner more sheltered smaller lock which was being used by local craft. The big new lock faces the harbour entrance and straight into the onshore breeze, which had built up quite a swell by this time. All concerned had great sport with warps and fenders deep below the lock sides until the gates closed behind the last arrivals at 2200 hrs.
They made a brave sight in the sunshine next day in the Commercial Basin and many other English yachts arrived over the weekend. There was widespread resentment that most of the publicity in the press about the crossing had been scooped by some clot in the African Queen; yes the one from the film, which surprise, surprise, had to be rescued by the lifeboat.
I am inclined to believe that the reason we did rather well at Dunkirk in 1940 was that we were all on the same side. While walking past the assembled Little Ships, we came across a bookstall selling accounts of the evacuation in which each double page described the experience of one person. A chap in a blazer came up and asked the stall keeper.
“Are you Dunkirk Veterans or British Legion?
“We are British Legion; we are not getting involved in any arguments!” The veterans seem to resent the Little Ships, which are now manned by new owners with no connection with the evacuation, who in turn resent the other motor craft who join in the visit and are banished out to seaward of the ceremony. I was told that the latter had written three times to the veterans running the service onshore, to ask if it could be broadcast to them via the Royal Navy guard ship and had not had one reply. Even I was warned at the Boat Show that I would have to hurry and book, and this was repeated later by a member of the Cruising Association. In fact any craft was free to visit Dunkirk, which looked to me to have enough room for most of the boats on the East Coast of England.
On Saturday morning in the calm of dawn I went alone to seek out the Dunkirk Memorial and found it a most moving experience as I walked along the historic sands with tear welling from my eyes, (they are coming again as I write this). The local workers were already out clearing blown sand from the area for this is also a memorial to the liberation of Dunkirk in 1945. Joy joined me to watch the French Memorial Service and parade through the town later that morning. On Sunday we sailed early and went right up on the beach to savour the real memory of it all. The northeast wind built up during the day but they now have massive offshore wave breaks, each about a hundred yards long built of six to eight foot square concrete blocks, which gave us a comfortable berth in which to wait for the wreath laying ceremony that afternoon. The visiting little ships circled east of the mole while a helicopter lowered the wreath. I tried to take colour slides of all the craft as they went past but the last ones are out of focus as I had not noticed that with each circuit, they were getting closer to us anchored behind the wave break, now almost covered. Back onshore, one entrant asked,
“Was that an outfall you were sheltering behind?” Many yachts from Belgium and Holland had come down to Dunkirk for the weekend and hoisted inverted black cones when they put on their motors for the long run in past the mole to the tidal mooring pontoons. They left them up, presumably because they knew they would need them when they left. A smart, peak capped Englishman from a motor yacht asked me why so many of them were displaying SOUTH CONES !
Monday came in with light winds from the northeast and we left early to get the full benefit of the westbound tide. This time the `Little Ships` overtook us before noon and disappeared towards Ramsgate. Off Dover we could barely stem the eastbound tide and when it did turn at dusk it was flat calm so we anchored for the night just west of Folkestone. Light airs from the southeast on Tuesday took us slowly round Dungeness and into Rye where we moored at the Strand on the top of the afternoon tide and rested one whole day while I bought and studied a Channel Pilot Book. On Thursday we left at dawn but thick fog (Royal Sovereign – fog 200m), gave us a long slow trip to Beachy Head at dusk where a light air from the southeast took us into lee of Newhaven breakwater for the night. Friday came in clear but equally short of wind until we were off Bognor Regis, where a thunderstorm in the early evening brought a rising wind from the northwest which gave us a lively trip through the Looe Channel in company with several yachts heading for the Round the Island race next day Then came a long, long beat to Chichester, cheered up by a clear sunset before a very black night.. It was 2250 hrs when we reached the beacon and raced in to moor opposite the Hayling Island S.C. in Stockers Lake.
During the next week we explored every corner of the extensive harbour in blustery weather from the west. Joy escaped with a kitbag of dirty washing when my son, who lives in Southampton, came down to see us and returned a day later with it cleaned and ironed. Late on Thursday we lowered down and polled under the bridge, which joins Hayling Island to the mainland to moor in Langstone harbour for the night. Friday was still lively and we spent the day at the Lock S.C., pleased with the chance to examine Morton Lock from where, each month in the early eighteen twenties, Portsmouth barges laden with gold bullion and escorted by redcoats were towed out by the steam tug Egremont to pass north of Hayling and Thorney islands into the Chichester canal which we had visited earlier. From here they joined the rivers Arun, Wey and Thames to reach London and the Bank of England (Shoal Waters explored the northern end of the derelict Wey-Arun canal in 1973). The wind was lighter on Saturday and we got across to Bembridge, one of the few places where craft deliberately dry out on sand just inside the entrance. Already tiny white specks of young barnacles smothered the bottom and a large cat was in the same state to the dismay of the new owner who had had her steam cleaned a fortnight earlier.
“ How do the barnacles get from the bottom of the sea up to the boat?” I explained the fall of spat and how oyster growers tried to throw clean shell into the beds to attract the young oysters as the newborn specks of life searched desperately for somewhere clean to hang on. Any boat with a clean bottom is a magnet.
Over the next few weeks we circumnavigated the Island counter clockwise, made Newport with its reasonably priced moorings our base and visited Ashlett, Woodmill, Botley, Beaulieu Abbey, Wotton, Yarmouth and Kings Quay Creek where we got right up into the mill pool. Shoal Waters was among those present when H.M. the Queen arrived in the Royal Yacht Britannia to inspect the Cunard fleet on its seventyfifth anniversary and had a poll position on the mud opposite the Ocean Terminal for the best firework display I have ever seen. The following Monday the Queen Mother inspected anchored yachts from Britannia as part of her ninetieth birthday celebrations but it was badly organised and the 1500 yachts present (half the total hoped for), were spread very thinly. We lay behind the Royal Yacht Squadron in the shelter of East Cowes. Sadly for both events the weather was dull and wet. Another highlight was the O.G.A meeting at Wooton Creek early in July where we met some fine gaff yachts and their keen crews but the westerly wind was too strong for a race when we would have seen them at their best. The most memorable item was a superb polished stone axe head produced by a member who had dredged it up while trawling for clams.
All good things come to an end and we had to be home in good time for the August bank holiday, which fell early in 1990. We planned to leave after Cowes week but it did not start until the 4th of August so I decided that we would take the first slant after it started. In fact Cowes week came in with a low over Southern Ireland and forecast of NW 3-4. We watched the start on Saturday from a buoy astern of Round the World racer, Rothmans and abeam of Britannia, which became a sort of ordeal by power boats. When the tide set east in the early afternoon we reluctantly left for home. Most of the racing craft had bunched under spinnakers along the northern shore making for three turning marks according to size, and strangely, we were with a few hundred yards of each mark as they rounded in the rising wind. I didn’t fancy the Looe channel at dusk and settled for Chichester for the night.
On Sunday we left at 1000hrs to fight the westbound tide to Selsey Bill which enabled us to solve the Looe/Owers controversy by rounding close to the starboard hand markers on the ends of the groins, less than one hundred yards from the shore. Once again we anchored for the night in the shelter of Newhaven Piers and left at dawn for a fine trip to Folkestone where we anchored over a foul tide in East Wear Bay before a glorious moonlight trip to anchor in the mouth of the Stour in Pegwell Bay at 0300hrs on Tuesday. During the next three days we dived deep into the heart of rural Kent amongst the trout and dragonflies (and mosquitoes) to Fordwich, the old port of Canterbury where two of our grandsons were able to join us. On the late afternoon ebb on Friday we left Sandwich with a southerly wind to round the North Foreland for an idyllic trip to the East Swale under a full moon. When I looked out next morning a dozen barges were drifting out to sea in the wake of a mass of smacks and gaff yachts for it was the Swale Smack and Barge Match. After watching them finish we joined in the celebrations at the Hollow Shore, (has any event a better venue?) On Sunday we sailed outside the Isle of Sheppey to the Medway where we watched the sun go down from the Shalfleet after visiting Chatham on the tide. By Tuesday morning it was obvious that the weather was breaking up and we left at 0500hrs with wind from the SW to reach the Blackwater S.C. at 1600hrs.
Shoal Waters had covered over 1250miles with wind and tide alone plus a bit of paddling and quanting. Harbour and marina charges had amounted to £84, much less than I had feared. £28 for Gaz for heating and cooking, £35 for two charts and a pilot book together with other items over and above food, pushed the cost of the 86 day trip to £190. My interest in sailing started with Maurice Griffith’s book `Yachting on a Small Income`, bought in paperback price 6d on Liverpool Street Station in 1944. I think I got the message!
