Writing the other day about the efforts some sailing magazines make in frightening their readers with tales of woe and near disaster in small boats, set me wondering why sailing and boating is such a love or hate activity. What was it that made me a boating person when there was no history of seafairing in my family? Why do I love the sea when so many others fear and loath the experience.
Maybe, it had something to do with the first formative experience. It happened like this.
I was brought
up in a small Yorkshire mining town and I didn’t get a chance to try boating until
I was at college in Portsmouth UK.
The college overlooked the entrance to Langstone Harbour
a bottleneck of water with a reputation for overfalls and fierce currents. In
the bar tales were told of students canoeing across the entrance on an ebb and
being carried clear across to the Isle of Wight.
No one knew who it had happened to - but everyone had a friend who …..
In
the early seventies, Langstone was a ‘working man’s’ harbour, lots of small
boats - many were home-made and some had been converted from ships lifeboats.
To my eyes, more used to spoil heaps from the coal mines, it seemed like heaven. The boats, and their
owners who turned up in the local pub with deep tans and bags-full of fresh
fish, fascinated me. I was an impoverished student so the idea of taking a boat
out and coming back with week’s supply of food had enormous attractions but,
without boat or funds, the idea didn’t develop until a fellow student - Charlie
struck a deal with a boat owner who lived a long way from the harbour. The
upshot was that Charlie would look after the boat, keep her maintained and have
her ready for the owner each time he arrived to do a spot of fishing. In return, Charlie would have free use of the
boat at all other times.
As
the new Skipper of the ‘Blue Moon’
Charlie recruited Paul and me as crew - not for our knowledge of the sea but
because we liked the same music and played pool together. We signed on before
seeing the boat or questioning Charlie’s credentials to lead the expedition.
Eleven
o’clock the next morning saw us looking for the ‘Blue Moon’, ‘varnished
all over, clinker built, solid and seakindly’, according to the owner. Three
quarters of an hour later Charlie had to admit that he didn’t know what
‘clinker’ meant and that he wouldn’t know a solid or seakindly hull from a piece of cheese. We found her eventually. She
was small, maybe twelve feet max, and the varnish was almost black. She looked like an old beer barrel.
We
found the outboard underneath and dragged her to the water with various bits of
tackle we had managed to borrow. The old Seagull started on the first pull and
soon we were at the harbour entrance. The ebb was fierce enough for Paul to
suggest that we didn’t need the outboard; the current was doing a fine job
taking us out to sea. Fatal words! The engine coughed and died. From here on we
were running on tidal power, sometimes backwards, sometimes sideways but always
out to sea - towards the Isle of Wight. Were
we about to prove the bar-room legend?
We
were also taking in water, not an obvious leak just a slow seepage into the
bilges - a pint every fifteen minutes or so, nothing to worry about so long as
you scooped it out from time to time.
At
sea the water was choppy enough to make Paul turn green and vomit over the side.
He wasn’t happy but Charlie and I decided that if we were to be washed up on
the Isle of Wight we may as well take some
fish with us. As the only one with a fishing rod, Charlie cast as far as he
could, the line raced out until there was no more on the spool, then it left
the spool altogether leaving Charlie holding the naked rod, his line and tackle
lost on the seabed.
I
didn’t have a rod but a friend had given me a hand-line with a hook, weight,
and some coloured beads on it. I hooked on a few worms, dropped it over the
side and tied it to the sternpost when it touched bottom. Charlie meanwhile was hand-lining from the
bow using Paul’s tackle.
As
the Isle of Wight loomed larger Charlie caught
a mackerel, the first of three that afternoon. I was impressed. Nothing was
happening on my line so I turned to the outboard. My old BSA motorbike
frequently broke down so I knew a few things about getting engines started.
There didn’t seem to be anything obviously wrong so I checked the fuel line and
found an on/off tap similar to one on the BSA. It was switched off. The seagull had started with a thimble-full
of fuel in the carburettor. It had stopped, starved of fuel a few minutes
later. I opened the tap, quietly
confident that we’d get home when we were ready.
Charlie’s
next fish was small and spiny with the face of the devil himself - we were
pleased to get him off the line and out of the boat but a few minutes later he
pulled an eel aboard, not huge but a fighter nonetheless. We dropped him into
the bottom of the boat along with the mackerel. Shortly afterwards I felt the
line jerk - my first fish! The adrenaline burn was out of all proportion to the
flattie which I hauled aboard.
As
the day wore on Paul became more morose and depressed. We hadn’t caught
anything else and so we had to accede to his wish to return home. As predicted,
the outboard started first time and soon we were skipping across the sea
towards Langstone, two of us at least, regretting the day’s ending and quietly
cursing Paul for his less than enthusiastic contribution. Fate took a hand in
gaining our revenge however. The boat’s motion under power revived the eel
which slithered through the mounting bilgewater and sank its teeth into Paul’s
bare foot. His howls could be heard in Southampton.
That
evening we turned up in the local pub, tired and tanned with a reasonable
bag-full of fish. We’d had a long day and learned a great deal. Why had Charlie
arranged for an eleven o’clock departure coinciding with the strongest ebb?
‘I didn’t’, he said. ‘I knew nothing about the tides
but I knew you wouldn’t be out of bed any earlier!’
That
first trip was one of several that Charlie and I made during a long summer and
endless autumn. Each trip taught us something new and gradually our catches and
credibility increased. Later that evening I fried the Plaice in butter and it
was fresh - like no fish I had eaten before. But now, fourty something years
and five boats later, I wonder who was really hooked that day - the
fish or me?
Seaward
What a lovely piece of writing. makes me want to start fishing again.
ReplyDeleteMichael
It had been a while since I visited website
ReplyDeletewith such high quality information. Thansk so much for the
useful info
Here is my page; trying to Conceive tips