We have two small children, 2 and 3½ years old, and so most of our sailing is somewhat restricted. However, once or twice a year my mother courageously agrees to baby-sit for us for the weekend. So on Saturday, 1st September ’73, we trundled up the motorway, boat in tow, heading for Conway and the DCA rally, looking forward to what we felt was to be our first proper cruise in our Wayfarer. I had spent the previous winter building her from a Small Craft composite kit, and it had taken most of this summer to get to know her and equip her with the gear recommended in the DCA cruising equipment list.

We met Joan Abrams and Brian Haskins with his son at Deganwy; a quick discussion and a phone call to the Met. Office confirmed that sea sailing was out, and that we should instead cruise up the Conway estuary, which, as the pilot book briefly states, is navigable for some twelve miles.

We decided to launch our boat first and then load it with gear, as it seemed rather heavy with everything aboard. Joan launched her boat fully laden, and was able to sail straight off. We should have done this, as the waves in the estuary made subsequent loading of the boat difficult: fully afloat it was awkward to load, and pulled ashore it pounded on the stones. This was the first of a series of lessons learnt this weekend which will not easily be forgotten. By the time we had finished loading and pithering about locking our van and wondering what we might have forgotten, Joan and Brian in the Tideway had disappeared among the moored boats in the harbour. We slowly sailed the mile across the harbour under jib alone, knowing that shortly the mast would have to be lowered to navigate under the bridges by the castle.

Lowering the mast in what we felt to be fine style, Sheila took the tiller, and I picked up the oars to row under the bridges; however, with the mast lowered it was quite impossible to row the boat properly, and so with little steerage way we were swept rapidly towards the bridges. We arrived on the other side somewhat confused, as we had scraped down the side of a moored fishing boat just before the tide carried us through the arches.

Joan, Brian and the Tideway were nowhere to be seen. While hoisting the mast and sails, we anxiously looked around for them, not wanting to become separated from them at such an early stage of the cruise. We finally concluded that, as the tide up the estuary was obviously strong, they must be round the next bend in the river. We did see some people in a rubber dinghy, and heard someone shout, but thought they must be fishing and calling to a group of people on the shore — more on this later.

We settled down to a spell of close-hauled sailing, main reefed down to the first batten, and Sheila sitting out in the gusts; not hard sailing, but satisfying, feeling that we were making good progress and putting the right amount of work in for it. Eventually we came to our first obstacle: power lines. The decision was made that sufficient room existed under them to safely pass without lowering the mast, and, with rapidly decreasing confidence and seeming increasing speed, we approached them, prudently going close to the bank nearest a pylon. There was in fact plenty of room. For the record, though, anyone with a tall alloy mast would be well advised to lower it, as the clearance in the middle of the river would be minimised due to the sag of the cable between the pylons. The very bottom cable is probably an earth one, as it has no insulators.

Soon the tide began to turn against us, and it was quite some time before the first road bridge was reached and it became necessary to go through the mast lowering ritual again. This time, instead of trying to row ineffectively with both oars, I rowed properly with one and Sheila steered us under the bridge. We anchored fifty yards on upstream and re-hoisted the mast, saying to ourselves, “Good; that was better. Getting the hang of it now.”

At this point the river banks start closing in and are wooded. There was little wind, and so, to catch the others up, who were now clearly much further up the river than we were — having had the benefit of the tide for longer than us — it was decided to bring the Seagull out of the locker and motor up-river to catch our friends. Mounting the engine heralded the start of a first class incident. Having prepared the engine for starting, we found the anchor had fouled, and as the current was sufficiently strong to have submerged the tripping line, we only managed to break it out by paying the warp out, hauling in fast, and trying to jerk it out. On the fourth attempt it came up, and I went aft to start the engine, looking apprehensively at the bridge. First pull, the engine roared into life, and the boat surged away from the bridge, only to stop just as suddenly with the anchor tripping line wound neatly and firmly round the prop. With an occasional glance at the now rapidly approaching bridge, frantic attempts were made leaning over the stern to unravel the length of rope, without success. Fighting off the feeling of rising panic and the urge to stand and do nothing but watch the disaster, we lowered the mast just in time to avoid hitting the bridge and being capsized. In fact, the mast was still coming down as the boat went under the bridge.

Re-anchoring back on the other side, we sorted ourselves out, restarted the engine and continued on our way upstream, thinking to ourselves next time either to row further up the river before re-rigging, or do it downstream if the engine is going on.

This stretch of river is delightful: the banks are frequently wooded, and the mountains sweep up on either side in magnificent curves. At one point we noticed that the smooth flow of the water was interrupted, and concluded that, as the river was narrower here, it was only running faster. We opened the throttle wide and our Seagull took us quickly through this area of faster flowing water. The scenery now changed, and the banks flattened out with tall rushes on either side. We continued, still under engine, up the river, but now we were beginning to doubt if the Tideway was in front of us. We finally ran out of navigable water a short way from another bridge, and it slowly began to sink in that somehow we had missed our friends on the way up. Where were they? And what were we to do? We had no tent cover for the boat, no way of going ashore, and — with the tide out — no way of returning down the river. The original plan had been to camp ashore using Joan’s inflatable as a ferry, and Brian and his son and ourselves were to camp ashore while Joan slept aboard.

With a little ingenuity, we soon rigged ourselves a snug over-boom tent cover with the flysheet from our ordinary tent. We had provisioned the boat well, and so a pleasant evening was spent over a meal; eventually we settled down in our sleeping bags and could just see the tops of the trees over the transom, slowly swimming in an arc round us.

I awoke at about two in the morning to wonder if I had made a proper knot to the anchor; I lay and worried about this for some time, thinking that I could not possibly go to sleep again in case it came undone in the night. Needless to say, when I checked in the morning, I had in fact done it properly, and there was no risk of us floating away. It was a perfect night, with a gentle breeze to swing us on our mooring. The stars were out and the water quietly gurgled and slapped around the hull. To stop the boat swinging around too much while at anchor, we left the outboard mounted, with the prop in the water. Without doing this, we were conscious of movement when we shut our eyes to sleep.

After breakfast, we tidied the boat and prepared for our return downriver. As there would be a bridge to negotiate soon, we decided to run down the first part of the river under engine.

As the banks slipped quickly by, we were unaware that our next adventure was about to start. Having come up the river, we thought we knew where all the hazards were, and, not really paying attention, we admired the scenery passing by, till, to our alarm, the prop fouled the bottom with a loud clattering and grating. Turning round from the now silent engine, to our horror we were confronted by roaring rapids stretching away in front and below us, with white water swirling round black rocks. By the time Sheila had said, “I’m frightened!”, we were well on our way over the edge, and with an oar each we managed to avoid hitting the first few rocks, till — out of control, going sideways, and bumping on submerged rocks — we ended up with a crunch of glassfibre, well and truly aground, half way down the rapids. We stood transfixed for a few moments, wondering if the force of the water would lift us off and send us further down, but no, the boat was firmly wedged on the rocks. We sat down and decided we would do nothing for five minutes but sit still and think. A little thought indicated that any attempt to move the boat (ha! ha!) might damage it, so it was decided to wait for the tide to float us off. We looked under the floorboards to see if we were holed, and all appeared to be in order.

The sun came out, and we busied ourselves with little jobs about the boat, like carving its name on the boom crutch, making a padded handle for the outboard tiller extension, drinking coffee and preparing sandwiches. There was not a soul in sight. Eventually a man and dog arrived on the bank. The river here is perhaps 100 yards wide, and the rapids drop perhaps 8’ in the same distance — too far for a conversation without shouting. He stood and stared at us for quite a while; we, for our part, pretended that quite clearly this was the best possible and only place to spend a late summer Sunday morning; and so, exuding confidence, we ignored him, and continued to carve wood and make sandwiches.

We could have waved and said good morning, but then he might have thought we wanted rescuing. Heaven forbid; it was embarrassing enough without having people coming to our aid! Four hours later, after seriously wondering if the moon had left its orbit, the tide came in and floated us off. We quickly started the engine and motored off downriver, half expecting the boat to quietly sink beneath us. It stayed afloat; and, in fact, when we examined the hull after hauling out, all that had happened was a number of surface scratches and small pieces of gel coat chipped out of the keel and rubbing strips.

After lowering the mast for the bridge at the site of the previous day’s spot of excitement, we hoisted sail and had a delightful run back down the estuary with a following wind. Sheila helmed for some of the time, and we practiced gybing in the manner recommended by John Glasspool in his book Open Boat Cruising, which, incidentally, is a very good book. At one point we sailed close to the shore and spotted what appeared to be a shark — about 6’ to 8’ long, and very dead — washed up at the high water mark.

The end of our cruise was now very near, and all that remained was to again lower the mast to go under the bridges by Conway Castle and haul the boat out. On arrival back at our car we found a note for us under the windscreen wiper from Brian Haskins; only then did we discover the reason for the disappearance of our friends. They had capsized just under the bridge — the rubber dinghy we saw had been them calling to us. This we thought and talked about very seriously, as clearly we had seen them, but what we saw was not what we were looking for, and so had sailed on. We feel there are possibly two more reasons why we missed them: we were very anxious not to be separated from them, and we were somewhat flustered after scraping the fishing boat near the bridge.

Clearly, to be fully observant and assimilate properly all that you see, it is necessary to be cool, calm and collected.