The Hustlers, Woods and Lustre Class yachts of Hunter’s Yard on the Norfolk Broads were until recently in the care of Norfolk County Council, but they have recently been forced to sell them. A private trust is trying to raise the money to preserve them as the ‘Norfolk Heritage Fleet’ — but their future is uncertain.

As usual we rise at first light to catch the tide to Yarmouth. The air is cold and quite still, but the grey ebb slides us relentlessly down the long empty reaches of the river, and we hope that the wind will come up with the sun. Our yacht has no engine. We must arrive in Yarmouth exactly at slack water in order to catch the young flood tide up Breydon Water, and without wind we will never get there in time. But then a zephyr hisses in the reed tops; the boom swings out, the main sheet stops dribbling and the gaff creaks as Luna leans to the breeze. We are on our way.

Every year for years the second day of our week’s holiday on the Norfolk Broads has begun much like this. Every September we hire one or two of the yachts from the old Hunter’s Yard, the only remaining fleet of yachts on the Broads that have not been motorised. Every year we take them away from their base in the idyllic northern waters to the strong tides and wide horizons of the southern rivers.

Like all of the yachts from Hunters Yard, Luna is kept in immaculate condition. She is an utterly traditional Broads yacht — her four berths are inside a cabin lit by oil lamps, and her cooking facilities are outside in the cockpit lockers. She has no winches, no electricity and no modern gizmos, but her hull is 28 feet of gleaming mahogany and she sails like a witch.

No matter how many times you catch the ebb down the Bure, you still approach Yarmouth with trepidation. The channel narrows, hemmed in by sheet piling, and the ebb runs ever faster with each mile. Once you are among the houses of Yarmouth the wind becomes fitful, and the tide sluices threateningly between the mud banks.

The first fixed bridge appears around a bend, and we must stop at one of the battered dolphins to get the mast down. Luna will need the whole width of the river to come about, and the ebb is still flowing strongly, so we’ll probably only get one chance. Round she comes in a great swirl. The sails shake. Only another few feet — then one crew member fends off while another quickly flings the bow warp around one of the vertical piles of the dolphin. They both leap to the halyards: the gaff drops smoothly down the mast, the boom is lowered into its crutches and the jib is dowsed onto the foredeck. We are safely alongside.

The mast is lowered on its counter weight and we overhaul the tangle of ropes. Someone rows across the river in the dinghy to a nearby telephone box to request a lift of the Breydon Bridge, while the rest of us quant Luna down through the fixed bridges. People on motorised craft find it hard to believe that we enjoy using this primitive method of propulsion, which requires one of the crew to plunge a pole to the bottom of a river and lean on it whilst walking aft down the side deck, but like rowing, quanting is as much a matter of technique and timing as strength. The trick is always to keep way on the vessel, and concentrate on the feel of the bottom, so you can avoid the embarrassment of plunging your pole so deep into the soft mud that you can’t retrieve it when you get to the stern.

Below the Yarmouth bridges are further dolphins, for sailing craft to moor up to while they raise their masts. They are a fine place to be. On one side is the open expanse of Breydon Water, with the great road bridge striding across it; on the other a couple of coasters are usually to be found at the grain quay. It is an honest and workmanlike place, but there is no time to savour the ambience of a commercial port: the tide is setting up the Yare and our bridge lift is booked — we must get on.

As we tack up the harbour, high on the Breydon Bridge three red lights go on, a siren wails and queues of vehicles begin to build up on the viaduct across Breydon Water, then — slowly — the opening span rises to the vertical. We continue tacking under the huge steel structure of the open span, as it is vital to keep steerage way right through the Breydon Bridge. It always disconcerts new crew members to watch us sail barely three boat lengths on each tack in the narrow navigation opening, but soon we are clear of the bridge and Breydon Water opens out before us, a wide estuary cut off from the sea, grey and wind-flecked in the morning light, its channel marked by two lines of stout steel posts curving off into the distance.

It is an exciting, wet beat up Breydon. Luna’s flat underwater sections slam into the steep seas, and salt spray lashes over the long cabin roof into the faces of the crew. At the head of Breydon the slow turning sails of the Berney Arms wind pump come into view and we have a choice of rivers. Ahead of us the mighty Yare can be navigated right to the heart of the city of Norwich, but we turn off into the more secluded waters of the River Waveney to port.

Commanding the high ground at the mouth of the Waveney, the impressive remains of Burgh Castle glow in the morning sunlight. It is a Roman fort, built in the last days of the empire to defend the Saxon Shore against the long boats of the invaders. On a sunny autumn evening it is a pleasant walk up to the castle from the river, and the view over Breydon marshes is breathtaking. But not this morning: yachts with no engines can’t waste fair tides.

Hemmed in by reeds, the river winds through mile after mile of low-lying marshland, punctuated by the brick towers of old wind pumps. Eventually the little community of St Olaves comes in to view around a long bend, and the tide quickens beneath us as a narrowing of the river heralds another bridge. Once again we stop to drop the mast, but this time the river is far too deep to quant, so we must deploy the ancient art of ‘drudging’.

Drudging is a devious way of drifting with the tide whilst retaining your ability to steer. You drift stern first, dragging your mudweight, (a primitive anchor prevalent on the Broads), along the bottom of the river, so your craft moves slower than the surrounding water and continues to answer the helm. But be warned that drudging always attracts a melee of confused motor cruisers, whose hire bases have not told them what do when they meet a yacht with its mast down, coming at them backwards through a bridge.

Just beyond St Olaves is the junction with the New Cut — the dead straight canal that slices across the marshland between the River Waveney and the River Yare — and a couple of miles further on a railway line crosses the river at Somerleyton swing bridge. As we approach the signalman leans out of the tall brick signal cabin and slides a board saying IN 20 MINUTES out from behind the sign that says BRIDGE WILL OPEN. A new crew member asks if we can put the kettle on, but we did that once and just when the tea was poured the bridge opened, and we had to make a dash for it with cups and saucers rolling all over the cockpit. Luna’s dainty blue and white porcelain lives dangerously enough at the best of times, so the crew have to make do with canned beer, as we sail up and down the river waiting for the bridge. A train rumbles slowly across. The signalman slides away IN 20 MINUTES and replaces it with IN 10 MINUTES. Another train crosses in the other direction, then there is a sharp clang and slowly the bridge swings open. We sail through with a cheery wave to the signalman, who leans out of the window and waves back.

The marshland slowly gives way to conventional farmland and trees begin to line the river bank. After sweeping majestically up the open lower reaches of the river, spray flying from our lee bow, we are reduced to idling along in the wind shadow of the trees. The crews of overtaking motor boats shake their heads sadly at our slow progress — but then they were probably still in bed when we were storming up Breydon.

Beccles church dominates the flat Suffolk countryside for miles around. Although the head of navigation is a few winding river miles beyond, at the remains of Geldeston Lock, if we stop at Beccles we can probably get all the way back down the Waveney to the New Cut by low water the next day, so we decide to spend the evening revisiting this delightful Georgian country town. Next day the squeal of the wooden blocks on Luna’s peak and throat halyards startles the early morning fishermen of Beccles as we swig up her great gaff mainsail, and slip away on the young ebb in the dawn light.

The wind is fresh and on the beam in the New Cut, and Luna powers along. She sweeps round majestically into the Yare to find Reedham swing bridge closed and the ebb still pouring out. We beat madly to and fro below the bridge amidst a confusion of power cruisers, wondering whether we are too early on our tide. We have a strict rule that the railway swing bridges are only to be attempted with a fair tide, as there have been too many tense moments in the past when we tried to creep through against foul tides, only to end up clawing our way through with our fingernails. Suddenly the bridge swings open for us, and we decide we can probably just about do it. Luna heals to the wind and accelerates. The Victorian ironwork looms above us. Luna slows as she enters its wind shadow, and there is a tense moment as the tide begins to have the better of us, but we inch through and slip gratefully into the wide reach beside Reedham village.

Luna snores up the Yare. The lower reaches of the river run through open farmland dominated by a huge sugar beet factory at Cantley, but beyond Brundall the river enters woodland, and some serious quanting is necessary in the lee of the trees, as it is a long, long way to Norwich. After all that effort, the first sight of the ancient city dominated by gasometers is a grave disappointment. We lower Luna’s mast for Norwich’s many fixed bridges, and bow haul her from the bank, and soon the surroundings improve. We haul her past the cliff-like walls of Colman’s Mustard works, past the quay that the coasters sometimes use and the rather Frenchified railway station. It is dusk when we finally moor in sight of the cathedral.

Already we must plan our tides to get Luna safely back to her home in the distant northern waters, and the usual heated discussion begins. People who have only ever sailed in the sea tend to look down on those who sail in Broadland waters: no ‘real’ navigation is required, there is no danger of heavy seas and time spent on the Broads does not even count towards a Yachtmaster certificate, so they believe that it is all a doddle. But the Broads demand sailing of the purest and most exacting kind. You are rarely out of the sort of confined waters in which a modern seagoing yacht would take fright and turn on its engine — but you have no engine to fall back on, so you must use every nuance of tide and wind to get where you want to go.

The ebb starts early the next morning, but we decide to risk wasting a few hours of tide for a quick look round the city. Norwich is a noble, romantic, characterful city, and we did not come all this way just to turn straight round and go back. But it is well before lunch time when we start sailing back down the river, bound for Rockland Broad. Rockland is one of our favourite spots, and it is nicely convenient for a passage back through Yarmouth the following day. We choose a secluded mooring in one of the dykes at the edge of the broad, hoist the lugsail of Luna’s little tender and slip quietly over its waters covered in hundreds of swans grazing on the shallow bottom.

Early the morning we are rolling down the lower reaches of the Yare, bound for Yarmouth, but we must stop briefly at the Berney Arms so that we can telephone the Breydon Bridge. It is a little ticklish coming alongside the piling, as the tide flows very strongly just here, and as it is flowing against the wind we have to luff to drop the sails then turn the other way to stem the tide just before we reach the piling. But the new crew members are adept at heroic leaps for the bank with the warps by this time, and soon all is secure. We manage to fit in a visit to the preserved wind pump. As we climb its tower it creeks and groans in the wind, and we look out of the windows at our moored yacht as the sails of the windmill slash past. The only other buildings in this wild and remote spot are the telephone box and the Berney Arms itself — the only pub in the country accessible by boat and train but not by road, as it has its own station.

There is a good wind all the way back down Breydon, but beyond Yarmouth it finally begins to fail us. We are reduced to bow hauling up the River Bure in a flat calm. We always take a long warp to Norfolk with us especially for this purpose, as we find bow hauling easier to sustain than quanting over distances. It can feel very odd, though, to walk for miles along the bank, pulling on the long towing warp, the boat at the other end invisible behind the reeds.

The wind remains light for the rest of the day and barely perks up the day after. In the lightest of airs we drift up to Thurne Mouth and turn out of the Bure into the River Thurne. Eventually the wind strengthens and Luna gurgles happily up Kendal Dyke, across the wetlands of Heigham Sound and into Meadow Dyke, which winds through the remotest Norfolk countryside to lonely Horsey Mere. Meadow Dyke is so narrow that Luna’s boom brushes the tops of the reeds on the other side of the dyke as we run swiftly down it before the wind, terrorising innocent motorcruisers coming the other way. As usual we spend our penultimate night lying to our mud weight in the middle of Horsey Mere, surrounded by the dabbling wildlife of this delightful, distant corner of the Broads.

I would strongly advise a newcomer to the Hunter’s yachts to spend a day or two getting the hang of handling their craft in the gentle waters above Potter before they venture down to the strong tides of Yarmouth. The sailing can be just as taxing, but the penalty for a mistake will merely be embarrassing, like coming abruptly to a stop in Potter Heigham with your main sheet wrapped around a bird table, (this really happened to us once). In the fiercer tides of the south, mistakes can be much more serious.

Our holiday ends as we sail sedately back down the Thurne to our habitual last night’s mooring in Thurne Dyke. Although we try to savour our last day on the Broads, it is tinged with regret that we will soon be leaving these special waters for another year. But there are folk singers in the bar of the Thurne Lion, and we spend our last evening banging our beer mugs on the table and singing along like the saltiest of deep sea sailors.