Feeling rather pleased with myself after having enjoyed a week's cruising around the Solent ports in my newly acquired secondhand 14' dinghy, I was looking through the D.C.A. journal when something caught my eyes:

“We would like accounts of voyages and early mistakes!”

Mistakes!

I had already contacted Mr. Coleman when my wife and I decided to move to Chichester on account of my son's health - and all that water in the harbour! I was invited to meet Mr. Coleman to have a look at his boat, but unfortunately I was unable to see him. With only about £30 left to spend after moving expenses from Kent, I could only afford an old boat and thus I began to look around, and without much difficulty I found one.

September 5th, 1955 found me in a 16' gaff rigged fishing boat, and a friend Nobby, in his old 16' Bosham dredger on the way to the Isle of Wight for a camping cruise. It was blowing hard from the South West when we landed on East Head - inside Chichester Harbour - for a conference. We decided to go on. I reefed down, as a precaution, and we sailed out of the harbour over the Winner, setting a course for the distant but visible Nab Tower, where we intended to go about and strike out for Bembridge Harbour. We did not know however that at that time the tide outside the harbour was running East.

It was not long before, hearing a sound of tearing, I looked up to see my well patched mainsail slowly tearing from the leach across to the luff. Staring at it in bewilderment, I watched the jagged edges get longer. Suddenly, stirred into action, I let go the halyards and managed to get the sail into the boat. Running under jib alone now, I pointed the boat towards the entrance to Chichester Harbour only to discover the set of the current for the first time, I was drifting slowly, but surely eastwards and Chichester Harbour was well to windward.

The boat was now being blown down wind, drifting and the water was by now racing out of the harbour so, joined by Nobby, I slowly "sailed" on to East Wittering beach. I did not like the bumping which the boat received as we grounded, but the ebb soon left us high and dry about half a mile from the shore on hard ground. Getting our gear ashore in a borrowed trolley, we pitched the tents on the foreshore, cooked a meal - and went for a drink.

Next morning I went to look at the boat which had quite a lot of water in her but seemed otherwise not too bad. Gathering the mainsail into a kit bag, I set off on the bus for home to get the sail repaired on my wife's sewing machine. During the middle of the day it rained hard and blew even harder; then, the sky cleared and the sun shone forth. I telephoned the Meteorological Office at Southampton and was told that tomorrow the wind would be about force 3 from the North; just the job, I thought.

When I got off the bus at Wittering I overheard some people talking; "That looks like him. Do you think we ought to tell him?” Then a young girl stepped forward: "Your boat is wrecked".

"Wrecked"

It must have been that bumping. When I found myself on the beach, there was Nobby collecting the pieces of wood and oars and putting them on the foreshore. "'The wind blew hard", he said, "just as the tide was beginning to float the boats and those breakers - they filled your boat and bounced her up and down on the sand - she split open like a nut."

There she lay in pieces but still tied together with sheets and halyards and stays riding up and down the waves like a serpent, still on the end of an anchor rope. When Nobby's mast went, the anchor rope slipped off the stump and his boat drifted ashore to have her bottom knocked out too.

Mistakes? I say they were. In the first place I ought to have sought some advice before even buying the boat. Even if she was only £30 she should have been surveyed and when we looked at the wreck at low water, we saw the keel and sternpost so rotten that she looked like cork.

Navigation: We did not think it applied to small boats. We had no idea which way the tide was running outside. We ought to have sailed the first leg on the port tack sailing west - sailing on that tack which points the boat nearest to its destination, and under bowed the tide, than we might have stood a chance of getting back into Chichester Harbour which would have been to leeward. Very important, we landed on a lee shore. Next time I'll stay at sea even if I have to row. Nor was the boat insured.

This year I went alone, with a tent awning rigged over the boat, and a hammock slung under the boom; things went very well - I visited Bembridge, The Folly Inn, Yarmouth, Lymington and the Beaulieu River. I studied tides and charts, and talked to other yachtsmen, but I still have not met Mr. Coleman; maybe I would have chanced Hurst Race and gone to Poole had I done so.

But I did meet my pin-up girl, and to think that I did not recognise the young lady I was talking to at Gins Farm until she waved to me from the cockpit of Wanderer III as I was leaving later on!