Chapter17 The Great Gale
Joy thought that the streetlights had gone out for a second or two but I realised that a very strong gust had bent a tree in the corner of our garden across the light. Something exceptional was happening. The bedside clock showed ten past four. As I made a cup of tea, I checked the tide table. High water was due at 0727 hrs which meant that our boat Shoal Waters would lifting off the mud at Heybridge, twelve miles away at about now and it was already too late to get there in time to lay out another anchor over the mud. Nevertheless, go down to the sea I must.
As I opened the garage doors the alarm went off on my neighbours` car as a volley of his ridge tiles landed on it. Small twigs and branches already littered the roads as I raced through Great Baddow to find the first tree almost blocking the highway. After that the road was covered with broken branches. I managed to find my way round most of them but had to stop to clear away a big one on the way up Danbury hill with the rest of the ancient trees leaning over me, creaking and groaning in the screaming wind. A voice in the dark advised me not to go any further as a cable, lying in the road, was sparking and obviously live. I chanced it and got through but once over the top of Danbury hill, the road was blocked solid with the fire brigade and police already at work. I dodged though a council estate and out onto the main road again.
Fewer trees grow nearer the coast but one had fallen right across the road just outside Maldon. Luckily it was opposite a garage and I turned in one entrance, rounded the pumps and shot out the other side. So much for trees. Half a mile from the boat, I was stopped by floods. I parked the car, donned my water boots and waded through. As I struggled across the field to the seawall, the cross wind almost knocked me sideways. In the club yard the shredded roller jib of a parked boat Thumper, cracked furiously. Over the seawall all was blackness, lightened only by dark grey sheets of spume and the vague shapes of white horses hurling themselves onshore. A cruiser was bashing the club jetty but there was nothing to be done for the whole structure was shuddering as if it might collapse any moment. In fact it survived but only just and had to be replaced completely (It was built before the first world war). I could just make out Shoal Waters and was alarmed to see a white cruiser dragging his mooring some fifty yards to windward of her. I judged that the water was less than five feet deep. Rowing was out of the question. I dashed into the club lobby, stripped to my underpants and half swam, half waded out to her. As the surf rolled over my head it occurred to me that it was a damn silly thing to do, but the little lady had looked after me in nearly forty thousand miles of cruising over the last twentyfive years and I was not going to desert her now. If she went, we both went. It was a relief to get my fingers round her toe rail and heave myself on board. The main hatch had gone but otherwise she was fine and only a little spray had got inside. I packed up the flogging cockpit cover and got a hammock lashing on the mainsail. The lifting rudder was released ready to pull down if the mooring broke or I had to slip. I judged that I could find a soft spot on the mud to leeward if the worst came to the worst.
I fended off the white cruiser. Another large blue fellow was coming quickly having broken his mooring but I was able to grasp his pulpit and lessen the bump as he hit me before racing by and sinking. Something else large loomed to windward but I eventually realised that it was not getting any closer. In fact it was a lightweight cruiser, capsized but still afloat on her mooring. After satisfying myself that nothing else was threatening, I clambered inside, dried and put on dry clothing. I always keep a small kitbag containing one change of clothing ready for such emergencies. The radiant stove roared into life and brought a warm glow of comfort to the wild scene but with no hatch there was too much wind for the stove under the kettle. How could I fix a canvas cockpit cover to the beam at the front of the hatchway? Suddenly I remembered the two small G clamps that I had on board for small repair jobs. It was a job holding the kettle on the stove but it soon boiled and a hot cup of tea (no milk) in the snug warmth of the tiny cabin increased my confidence in the situation. Every few minutes I put my head out of the hatch into the maelstrom to peer up to windward and pulled it back again with my hair soaking wet. The radio reported devastation everywhere and the lowest barometer reading ever. Another hour to high water! Would everything hold? Gradually I realised that it was getting lighter. A pair of bright new oars had blown up on the beach and I noted that instead of surging back and forth with the waves, they were lying still. The tide must be falling already! That the tide was a very low one and turned early, saved a lot of damage to craft which blew ashore. On a normal high water they would have ended up crashing against the concrete sea wall but on this tide they merely drove up on the beach. The only one seriously stove in was a small cruiser who was unlucky enough to drive onto a concrete smack already there. Gradually the surf got easier and I lay back and relaxed until I could wade ashore. By this time the extent of the damage was becoming apparent. Most of the larger boats had gone. Many smaller ones still on their moorings had obviously been dismasted or even overturned by drifters. Several masts protruded from the water. Some forty boats of all sizes had piled up along the shore at Mill Beach. I walked round the seawall and found my undamaged hatch stranded in the pool of an old tide mill known as the graveyard!
Apart from the few people who lived locally, no other members found their way through to the club until well after midday due to fallen trees, in particular a giant Oak on the Hatfield Peveral road. Strangely enough, although some places along my route were without power for ten or fourteen days, both power and the telephone were fine at our isolated clubhouse on the seawall across an open field. As the long day wore on, the wind eased under a warm October sun and club members drifted down to sort out their boats. Many of the smaller sunken and capsized boats were carried ashore. Enthusiasts swarmed round heavier capsized craft to right them with sickening crunches. Gear of all sorts was recovered from the marshes and beaches. Visitors galore, many with cameras clicking, wandered among the stranded boats which I christened the Mill Beach Boat Show to the mild irritation of some of the exhibitors. All in all, it was a stirring tribute to human optimism; totally inadequate lightweight, badly designed moorings, grotty chain and cheap rope chafed through by stemhead fittings made of stainless steel sheet with sharp edges and no retaining pins. A new type of club bore emerged; the chap who corners any likely victim to give him a link by link account of the size and strength of his mooring as if to convince himself that his boat never broke adrift in spite of the clear evidence to the contrary.
By the time darkness closed in, the tide was returning and a procession of rowing dinghies set out from the club jetty to inspect and tidy up those boats still on their moorings over deep mud. Suddenly engines began to roar to life over on Mill Beach. Navigation lights came on to compete with a sky filling with stars. Torches and spotlights flashed everywhere as the bend in the river off the club became a miniature Piccadilly Circus for an hour or so. Our club launch was busy with a towrope wherever necessary, and the club ladies manned the galley as a carnival atmosphere took over. I drove home singing happily, almost ashamed of myself to admit to having thoroughly enjoyed the days sport.
