Having just read an article entitled “Mistakes” printed in one of the 1956 Bulletins I am prompted to recount a couple of my many misfortunes.

We had left Joy at Ipswich Sailing Club after a week’s cruising and were in high hopes of sailing back to Bradwell, a distance of 30 miles on this particular Sunday. As Gladys had to work Saturday morning we did not arrive at the clubhouse until the afternoon and had a third member as crew who knew nothing about sailing. We drifted down the River Orwell with the tide and no wind and camped opposite Pin Mill which is about half way to the mouth of the river for the night.

The next day the wind was south west force 4-5 so Bradwell was out and with two reefs down we beat down to Harwich and went ashore there in the lee of the buildings to have lunch and make a final decision whether to carry on to Walton which is a short distance along the coast or turn back up the Orwell or Stour. With the sun shining and the water smooth in the lee of the shore, conditions looked fine for sailing — and so they were for a yacht — but Joy is a sharpie, a little tender and with low freeboard, however we planned to plug away against the wind to Walton. Gladys manfully worked the stirrup pump for the first half hour just keeping pace with the intake of spray, but the pump had reached a ripe old age and died on us. Our standby for baling was an enormous saucepan which also did duty as a stewpot and wash basin, but we just could not spare Gladys’s weight off the gunwale for baling so it became obvious that we would have to turn and run back to Harwich. Having discussed the operation in detail I waited for a calm patch and started bearing away. Too late, a wave hit us broadside, the boom end was in the water and water was pouring in over the side whilst some of us clung to the windward gunwale. Joy righted herself after shipping many gallons of water and we sped back to Harwich. Anchored again in the lee of the buildings we shook our ruffled feathers and spent a strenuous half hour with various utensils baling out — the pump was irreparable.

It went against the grain to have to return up the Orwell and I calculated it would be a reach most of the way up the Stour to Manningtree against the tide so we up anchored and set off once more. My calculations were wrong and it turned out to be a beat. Having cleared Parkstone Quay progress was painfully slow and at the end of each tack we seemed to come to the same stretch of glistening mud. Eventually Gladys remarked, ‘We seem to be rather low in the water!” I had ignored the amount of water coming aboard at each wave because it all disappeared under the floorboards which are quite high and Gladys’s ballast could not be spared to bale. We reached the bank almost completely under water and plunged out into mud up to our knees. Now completely demoralised the only solution was to go back to Harwich and anchor off Shotley. The tedious four hour journey home by train carrying mountains of wet luggage came as a fit ending to a day of mistakes and the “crew” has not been sailing since.

Another incident happened when we had a mooring, together with nearly five hundred others at Burnham on Crouch. Being a Sunday afternoon there was a vast crowd of spectators on shore revelling in the antics of the not-so-goods. We were running down river with a spring tide sufficient to submerge all the mooring buoys, with two reefs down. To pick up in the approved manner would have meant shaking out a reef to get back over the four knot current so we ran for where we thought the buoy should be, missed, and were swept past the next three dinghies on the trot before we could come up into the wind. Whilst passing between two dinghies on the trot the downstream mooring warp jammed between Joy’s transom and rudder. In freeing the warp I leaned on the deck of the dinghy and suddenly found myself being torn in two as Joy sprang forward released from the grip of the warp. I was left like an oilskinned mermaid festooned round the bows of the dinghy whilst Joy swept down river ricocheting from one expensive yacht to another whilst the crew stood majestically lowering her sails. She ended up across the bows of two large launches tied together from where she was rescued by the yard launch with, curiously enough, no substantial damage.

The lessons I learnt from these two episodes were: don’t be misguided by the calm water and light breeze in a sheltered stretch of water, study the tree tops and judge the height of the waves outside by them and, when bringing up in a crowded anchorage make sure that the boat is sailing faster than the current.