We left Enfield at 7am and arrived at Hunter’s yard where we were to pick up our boat at 9:15am having made good time on the M11 and A11. It was a beautiful day with bright sunshine but very little wind and both Mark and myself thought we were probably in for a day drifting along. We were wrong.
After payment we were shown to our boat called Rebel Reveller, what is described in the brochure as a half decker – a rather strange name for an open boat with just a small compartment in the fore of the boat and another small compartment at the stern. She was over 22 foot long with what seemed to me to be an extraordinarily large gunter rigged main sail and a tiny jib. We were given no instructions and so had to ‘get to know the ropes’ on the way. We set off and it was immediately clear that she was able to use the slightest wind to glide through the water, Indeed when the wind picked up she would fly, carving her way through the water with ease. She turned out to be a beautiful sail, well mannered and exciting, with an excellent tacking angle which was to prove very important in the narrow channels.
It was only after we had exited the boat yard and were on our way that we realised we had no chart! I had planned to buy one at the boatyard but had completely forgotten, so keen was I to get on the water. So there we were sailing away with no idea were we were going! But perhaps that is the best way to travel. Sometimes not knowing where you are going is better than having a tightly planned schedule where your experience is curtailed by the plans you made.
In his book ‘The Time Paradox’ Philip Zimbardo recalls giving a young man a lift in his car one day. The man says he is ‘going south’ and as they travel on Zimbardo tries to ascertain from him exactly what his destination is. After a while it becomes clear that ‘going south’ just means heading off in a general direction with no specific goal in mind. Initially Zimbardo is annoyed and dismayed by the young man’s attitude but then comes to appreciate the value of traveling with no specific destination in mind. It makes the journey more important than the destination.
Well we spent the day sailing all the way up to Horning, via a brief visit to South Walsham Broad, where we stopped briefly for dinner and then made our way back arriving at the boatyard by 6:30pm. We estimated we must have been sailing for at least eight hours!
Sailing on the Broad’s holds many delights – the reed beds that line the side of the waterway or the trees, the glimpse of a church in the distance and the heron that stands aloof or skims the water to catch a fish. On the water we admired the many beautiful traditional sailing craft and despised the ugly functional motorboats. There is something quite exhilarating and satisfying about using the wind alone to propel oneself through the water. Sailing boats give the impression of being organic because they work with nature rather than attempt to control nature via brutish engines. They are elegance and beauty personified. Our little boat had no motor to get us out of trouble or to speed us to our home berth, but relied entirely on the wind and our ability to handle the sails to get where we wanted.
For some reason the motorboats seemed to come in groups, like buses and when they had passed and we were left alone for a while, the silence of the waterway with just the slap of water on our hull or the flap of the sails on a tack would create a sense of peace and repose, only to be punctuated at the next turn in the river by the appearance of a motorboat with its thumping wheezing motor.
There were many highlights of the sail, some of them unplanned. Mark managed to crash us into a tree on a turn and twigs and bits of foliage rained down on the boat for a while. The tree seemed to come off worse from the encounter – Rebel Reveller took it all in her stride. I for my part managed to get us aground on a reed bed when I mis-timed a tack and the wind blew us firmly onto the vegetation. We managed to extricate ourselves though.
We overtook four other sailing boats (and nearly one motor boat!). When the wind picked up she would lift her skirts and run and in a stiff breeze she must be an exhilarating sail. It was clear from other sailboats on the river that she was slightly slower on a light breeze but once the wind rose she was unbeatable. She also had the advantage of being able to turn tightly through a tack, particularly important as with her shallow draught she was subject to very strong leeway.
We managed to sail her directly onto her moorings. Mark sailed her onto the pontoon at the pub in Horning and I sailed her back to her berth at Hunters yard. There is something very satisfying about being able to sail with skill and precision in close quarters.
The motor-boaters seemed to be either quite considerate or totally foolish. At many points the river and channels were quite narrow and we had to put in very short boards. It was clear that most motor-boaters were wary of sailing craft, no doubt having been told that we had right of way, but some were totally useless at timing their overtaking. On one occasion I just missed a large motorboat on a turn by no more than a few inches. And it was not only the motorboats. One particular sailing boat that was running up the river obviously hadn’t worked out that as the tacking boat we had right of way and blithely sailed on making me do a complete 360-degree gybing turn!
And just when we thought it was over it wasn’t! At about 6pm we found ourselves at the entrance to the inlet that we presumed led to Hunters yard. We had turned into the wind and we discussing how best to get to our berth – paddling or see if we could tack up when we drifted onto a nearby motorboat in the narrow channel. I apologised to the lady in the boat for our impromptu appearance but she seemed perfectly happy for her boat to provide us with a brief mooring point! I thought then to check by asking her whether this was in fact the inlet to Hunters yard and was pleased I did, for she informed me both by word and by providing a chart (a chart! – the only chart we had seen all day) that this wasn’t in fact the inlet at all, and that we needed to sail further along the main channel. We managed somehow to extricate ourselves from the boats at the entrance to this narrow inlet and eventually found our way back to Hunters yard where we sailed onto the mooring and packed her up tight for the night.
On the way back I reflected on what a super day we had had and wondered who would be sailing Rebel Reveller the following day. The trouble with boats is that you can get very attached to them, especially if you’ve had a super sail!
