Retirement. Freedom at Last continued

The starting date for the qualifying voyages to the I.W.R. was the 12th of July. It did not have to be a continuous trip. At a previous rally at Mile End on the River Lee, we were beaten into second place by a chap who had rowed a Mirror dinghy some two hundred miles back and forth across the countries` canal system. This time we were determined to win and decided to start from the northeast corner of the Broads on the Brograve bridge, the present limit of navigation on the Waxham New Cut, visiting all heads of navigation to starboard. Briefly, we left Yarmouth on Tuesday to call at Southwold and explore the River Blyth to Blythburgh on Wednesday, sailed into the Ore/Alde to Snape on Thursday, Woodbridge on the River Deben on Friday, the Orwell to Ipswich on Saturday, Walton Backwaters on Sunday and the Stour to Manningtree on Monday. This latter port has a handy railway station and my crew jumped ship in order to make certain of being in front of the TV for a royal wedding. I pressed on to Colchester on Tuesday and picked up my mooring on Wednesday in time to join her to watch the wedding. We had a family wedding that weekend so it was Sunday afternoon before we sailed again. This time we entered the Chelmer and Blackwater Navigation, sailing when possible and bow hauling or quanting when not, for the fourteen miles to Chelmsford. On route I broke the bowsprit. Over the years I had got into the habit of stepping on it to reach the bank. This works well if the mast is up and the forestay supports the end of the bowsprit but if you try it when the mast is down it just snaps. Thus we live and learn. Back at the mooring, the local boat yard found me a broken topmast, five inches in diameter, which by sunset was down to three inches and had had its first coat of varnish. Off once more, we visited Battlesbridge at the head of the Crouch and Rochford on the Roach before slipping through Havengore to Leigh and Benfleet. We had time in hand on the Thames and visited Dartford Creek and All Hallows on the south shore as well as Pitsea at the head of Hole Haven Creek and then up Barking Creek to Ilford where we found the banks smothered with oceans of pink balsam. The seeds are like miniature pea pods and explode when touched, entertaining to all ages and we couldn’t resist the temptation to indulge.

  On Sunday evening we entered the tortuous Bow Creek early on the flood to be greeted by eleven herons wading in the shallow water. A local bird watcher told us that twentytwo was the record! That night found us on the mud outside the great mill at Bow ready to enter the Lee Navigation as early as possible next day before the water was deep enough for any lighter traffic to move. Then we began the long haul across London. I had two ways to join the Regents Canal, either through the four locks of the delightful Hertford Union or through the Limehouse Cut into the ten acre Limehouse Basin and the proper start to the Regents Canal (of course there are four locks up to the junction with the Hertford Union). This was the last time we would see this historic basin, once busy with craft from all over the world, for at our next visit we found half of it had been filled in for housing and the rest had become a marina. I chose the latter route, as I knew that there had been a cruise in company down the Regents Canal the previous weekend and the locks would be in smooth working order. That night we moored up among the private boats in the St Pancreas Basin, one of the relics of the halcyon days of canal traffic that are now used as private boat marinas. The canal foreman was intrigued by our efforts and visited us on his moped each day to check (an even admire) our progress over the twentyfive miles. This canal journey is amazingly quiet and peaceful in sharp contrast to the noise and mayhem visible if one peeps up onto the top of one of the endless road bridges. A viaduct carries the canal over the London North Circular road and we raised the mast to sail across, one of the few coastal craft ever to do so. A sad sight along the way, were the bricked up windows and doorways of endless buildings that have forsaken the canal boat for the motor lorry. The canal passes through the London Zoo and more open country than most people would expect with a large new country park at the western end where we stopped the second night. There are two tunnels on this canal and unpowered craft are not allowed to use them. The first, at Islington, is very quiet and we quanted through but the second, the Maida tunnel, leads into Little Venice and in view of the regular tripper traffic, we got a tow. Most of the locks on the system are at either end with a fourteen mile stretch beyond Camden on the same level. It is rather strange to sail along and look down at a church steeple half a mile away. Most important for us, the towpath was in first class order as part of a system of pleasant walks for the public.

  This left us with an `easy leap` to the rally site on Thursday including a flight of five locks which we shared with a canal maintenance tug in line with the official appeal to save water. It was one of my most frightening experiences in 70,000 miles of cruising for they only seemed to have one grotty bit of rope which they hooked over the lower gates and then roared the engine full speed astern to drag them open to let the water out as fast as possible. I watched in horror in case the rope broke, for the tug would surely hurtle astern and crush Shoal Waters to matchwood! It held and we arrived safely at the rally site at lunchtime. Now this was the second time we had been here. When we came in from the Brentford end a few years ago, we tied up for tea just above a lovely cast iron footbridge, one of the first ever made. At the rally, each of the four or five hundred craft is allocated a specific spot, just long enough to take them. Unbelievably, we were allocated to that same spot!

  The days passed busily for there is always plenty to see and do. Perhaps the most delightful moments are visits from friends from the past and distant places who recognise the boat. There are two main problems. The first is disposal of boat `waste`. Emptying facilities are available along the canal system available for anyone with a special key and frequent enough to provide for normal demands. During rallies, craft cannot move off to the nearest sanitary site and things are made worse because many of them invite visitors to join them. The answer is the `Lavender boat` which tours the site each morning receiving toilets and buckets from each craft which are tipped with due ceremony and ribald incantations such as

  “Not vindaloo again last night?” and the containers duly handed back. The second problem is that while craft arrive over the previous ten or twelve days, nearly all want to leave as soon as the event is over for many have come long distances and holidays are coming to an end. The locks either side of the rally site have a limited capacity and are usually manned to speed the craft through. Booking lists for leaving are put up early during the rally and generally people keep to the places they have agreed. Fortunately for those of us bound into the Thames at Brentford, it was high tide next morning and they were able to open both ends of the lock for an hour or so to enable craft to pass straight through, which got a lot of craft moving out onto the tideway in a hurry. We stopped to pick blackberries along the high walls, some of the best we have ever found, before dropping down to what is now the Dome peninsular where we met the flood and anchored for some sleep as rain tumbled down hour after hour. Two days later Joy took my photo as I walked ashore through the mud at Heybridge with a large silver cup under each arm, one for the longest unpowered voyage and the other for the longest trip from salt water. By the end of our first season of retirement we had covered well over 2,000 nautical miles in over a hundred nights on board. As I write in late 2005, we have enjoyed another nineteen similar years.