- a story of wet things, corned beef sandwiches and bent wind indicators

By the end of that week I was absolutely fagged out. I was recovering from my SAT's (Standard Assessment Tests), and at the same time losing sleep from desperately trying to finish the awning that I was currently working on - and had been 'currently' working on, on and off for the past several months, for it to go up to Coniston with Peggy the next day. My arms were aching, I was falling asleep, and it was only Wednesday - I think that 'end of that week' may have been a slight exaggeration...

I had to leave school early on Friday in order for my Mum and me to follow Dad, Andrew - my brother, Spiritwings and Peggy up to the lake on the train. We got our train in good time and by about 7:15 we had arrived in Windermere to be met by the others and taken by borrowed car to the Coniston Old Hall Campsite. Peggy was waiting for me upside-down outside the big tent. I had her turned over, not being terribly big myself; screwed on a new cleat and wind indicator (useless thing) bracket, and eventually had her anchored off the beach, just in time for me to erect the awning in any light. I managed to get it up in the dark, though amidst intellectually stimulating conversation with my brother, who I had let stay and watch on the condition that it would strictly be 'intellectually stimulating' conversation.

I finally managed to get into bed aboard Peggy at about 11:00, feeling dreadfully sick. Peggy is not a very big boat, 7' 10" to be pedantic, and so was susceptible to movement at the smallest of waves. I lay there until it must have been about 02:00, terrified that the slowly increasing wind would capsize her, praying to God that it wouldn't and that he would send me to sleep quickly so that if I was going to drown I wouldn't know!

I awoke, to my extreme relief, later, but a quick assessment of the situation told me that I didn't want to have done. It was 04:25, it was fairly light - it always is at that time at Coniston. It was calm but it was raining. I sat up to feel tiny droplets of water coming through the tent walls: it used to be an old tent of my parents and needed water-proofing. I now knew what that worrying 'ping, ping' was - water dripping onto the starboard buoyancy bag just next to my head.

The driest thing that morning was the anchor. I had tried that night to arrange everything so that I would stay as dry as possible, but to no avail. I had woken up slowly, and it had taken me a while to realise that I was in fact lying in an inch of water. I wasn't cold at all, nice and toasty, but I felt that at 6:30 in the morning I could jolly well get up and sort all my wet things out, the wettest of which was, I think, my sleeping bag and towel. I took everything out, laid it out on the shore, tied my awning back half way, slacked off the stern warp a bit and had breakfast.

After an unusual breakfast of Heinz tomato soup and Scottish Cheddar sandwiches, I continued with the salvage operation, leaving my awning and sleeping bag ashore; I wouldn't be needing them again until tonight, so there was no point in keeping them aboard as I would be returning to the site to sleep. I kept all my 'essentials' aboard though - food, spare clothes and 10 gallon emulsion water-proof container-bucket, the most essential of which was probably my towel! It must have been 9:45, give or take an hour, when I set off, and amidst cries of 'Farewell and Adieu' I shipped my oars and started the voyage to Peel Island in a total calm. But I had only rowed a couple of hundred yards when I decided to hoist the sail, and to my complete and utter surprise Peggy started sailing.

She was doing really well when I looked back to see that Spiritwings had finally started; I could see her large white Bermudan rig making its way slowly into the middle of the lake a couple of miles astern of me. She stayed at that sort of distance from me most of the way down - much to the chagrin of the Kestrel's crew! - only catching up nearer the island when Peggy was more in need of wind than she had been for the previous two hours.

I moored in the Secret Harbour, having sculled in and during which I managed to bend my new wind indicator on the trees that overhang the harbour and ran up to the look-out place to photograph and watch Spiritwings coming down. When she arrived I moved Peggy over and bent that stupid wind indicator even more, to make room for her in the harbour. The water level in the lake was quite high and the harbour was perfect, except size-wise. Nobody could have seen Peggy in there unless they happened to look right in.

We had our lunches up at the look-out place, me with my corned beef sandwiches, and they with their whatever they had. I had to scrounge something for pudding as I, being a bit, shall we say, 'thick', had forgotten one for myself.

We then explored the island, it not actually being something we hadn't ever done before, but it being something that I, for one, have to do. It's just one of those things.

It's amazing just how friendly the natives that you meet here are. I met several on the island to whom I said "Hello" and with whom made friendly conversation about various boats, mine herself receiving more compliments than even I had come to expect. She did look sweet lying there alongside the Kestrel, though, and I was proud of her, and wouldn't have swapped her for a Drascombe.

Spiritwings was the first to leave, followed a little while later by Peggy and me. I soon had the 55 sq ft standing lugsail set and drawing, and as we sailed past the island on the way up I waved farewell to a couple of friendly natives that were still there.

The wind by then had changed direction by 180 degrees, so it was another run in the opposite direction. There had been occasional gusts on the way down, one lasting a good 15 minutes in which Peggy had managed to reach 2 knots - don't be too surprised, but on the voyage home we had none of these. Spiritwings was soon much further away than she had been when we set off. But still, I had myself to talk to and a nice boat to keep me occupied and I was enjoying it all enormously. This was Peggy's first real voyage, her first time this far down the lake and on Peel Island, in the secret harbour. It was wonderful.

I arrived back at the campsite at perhaps three or four, and had a nice time simply mucking about off the Old Hall moorings, getting in the way of the passenger boats (oops) and showing off to my brother who had taken Spiritwings out on his own. He was in fact doing very well, although he was a bit late for his tea - 2 hours! And how much faster I could row Peggy than he could sail the Kestrel! It was all very nice just meandering, watching the other boats and taking in the scenery, all of which was reflected in the glassy water of the windless lake.

I anchored again a few feet away from the beach at maybe 5:30 to have my tea of PotNoodles which I somehow managed to cock up and throw all over the boat. This was followed by the boiling hot water that I had prepared for the noodles and the corned beef sandwiches, after which I drifted into the middle of the lake and back eating a school flapjack. These flapjacks are one of school's few virtues - they taste really nice and cost a mere 23p!

This time I moored Peggy closer to the shore, parallel to it, with her anchor forward of her, a fluke showing above the water, and her painter made fast astern of her to the fence at the northern edge of the beach. I had stowed everything properly 'before' I rigged the awning, so I wasn't feeling sick at all before I turned in.

That night was absolute bliss. I fell asleep almost as soon as my head hit the smock that I was using for a pillow. She was wonderfully comfortable, warm, and there was very little, if any movement. It didn't get very dark at all, all night, and when I looked out at about four-thirty it looked magical. When I woke that time the boat was moving, there were waves, but other than to look outside I did nothing except to go back to sleep - my sea-sickness overcome, I had every intention of catching up on a bit of sleep lost the previous night.

But when I woke next morning Peggy was thrashing wildly about and I leapt up, as well as I could... yelling "Abandon ship!" But when I saw that she was coming to no harm I sat back and looked at the time - 6:30. If I started getting ready now I could be up at the tent in good time for Dad and me to get to church for the 8:00 communion service.

Then it started raining. Heavily. The wind got up even more, the anchor started dragging and there was a rumble of thunder. Oh dear. I quickly checked that all was OK on board, then jumped outside with my welly-boots on (my welly-boots that were still wet from er, previous experience) and got Peggy ready for the anticipated onslaught. I took up the anchor and moved it up the beach, then pulled Peggy up so that she was on shore, but still mostly in the water. This I found, when back on board to be unsatisfactory as she couldn't cope with the waves pounding her with me on board. So I laid towels down her insides, gave one final check to ensure that everything would remain relatively dry, then ran like the clappers back to the big tent where I found everybody sensibly still asleep. I stood there for a while, water dripping off my smock, thinking. All the noise must have woken Mum up as she poked her head out of the bedroom door and said "hi". I explained to her the situation, and told her there was a pool of water that seemed to be forming on the ground round my feet and that it couldn't possibly have come off me. It was soon obvious to us, now including Dad who had also woken up, that it was coming from outside the tent, and very soon we had a River Thames running over the kitchen ground sheet, which was itself floating on, in some place, a couple of inches of water, as was the bedroom floor. By now it was a full scale thunder storm and I was worried about Peggy but couldn't go and check up on her because I would probably have drowned in the rain!

Almost as soon as it had stopped raining I ran down to the camp landing-place to find that the storm had left Peggy a little way further up the beach than I had left her, the waves had really got quite large. That, combined with the wind had pushed her up the beach far enough for her not actually to be floating at all. I soon refloated her, having first looked inside to see that there had gathered there from the storm alone, which couldn't have lasted more than twenty minutes, an easy two inches of water. Everything was not only wet but soaked.

A while later, however, found me sitting in the boat under the awning eating my breakfast of Heinz vegetable soup and corned beef sandwiches. A single small tin of beef and a miniature loaf of bread had lasted me perfectly over the weekend. It was great. It had sort of made up for the fact that I had forgotten most other things to eat, but for the future I don't think this is a particularly wonderful diet...

After I had breakfast I rowed across the lake and back, the latter taking about ten minutes. I sculled the last few yards but was just going up the shore a little way, when Mum called me in and I drove Peggy ashore just next to where she was standing. She said we would be going up to the Rose Croft Tearooms, and that if I was to come I would have to tie Peggy up and come along now. I tied Peggy up to the fence and left her afloat. I didn't think about the fact that this was the last time for a while that I would be doing that. It would be better that way. It's just another of those things.