It started in a pub, near Sharpness. The Exe had been agreed for the season's first rally, the when remained open. "How about the Easter holiday..?" I tried. Silence filtered and spread from one corner of the table. "You don't mean.... Holy Week..?" a voice quested. Trying to keep the conversation neutral, I replied "There's a bank holiday about then - Friday and Monday, a nice long one." Roger started to take an interest. "Remember Father Colin's coming to stay" the voice reminded. "Well he can jolly well come sailing" said Roger.

I lay awake at six, the world seemed grim and unfriendly. The comfortable caravan was too secure to leave. Had I been on my boat, urgent need or cold would have forced action, but even Roger had taken to the 'Youth' Hostel. The day before I had installed the Japanese usurper on Black Jack David and it had broken a shear pin. I had sat there, marooned on my borrowed mooring by tide and Topsham mud. Various figures came and shouted incomprehensibly from the shore. I could no longer act as ferry to the Turf Inn and more to the point, two small boys were huddled in the tiny cuddy as the wintry wind rose. It was obvious what I should do. I never trust engines anyway, and both tide and wind were strong for Turf. An excuse to bend on the sails, trying the narrow channels of mud with my four foot fin keel.

It was well on the way to low water as we approached the pontoon. I came to ground ten feet off and prepared the grapnel. On the third throw, a fluke caught between two boards. I winched up the keel, the current caught, the rope strained but the tip precariously held. Grasping the rope handle I swung round alongside Baggywrinkle, fendering well her new varnish and put my two sons ashore. At the waterside pub I was reunited with the rest of my family who had taken the proper ferry. Jonquil Stapleton, whose mooring I had borrowed, sat in quiet satisfaction having instantly recognised Roger from Alan's description. Meanwhile, Alan was taking soil samples in a distant corner of Pakistan and Tai Tai sat in their Topsham garden. Jim Vallis's stout boots confirmed that his Mirror was indeed laid up at his home nearby. Apart from Roger, only one other figure wore yellow oilskins. This soft-faced man with Irish tones to his voice, Roger's crew, was introduced as Colin.

Back at the pontoon, I discovered that the Tohatsu had a spare shear pin. I fitted it and started the engine, the propeller revolved once more. I set out for Topsham under sail, in company with Baggywrinkle, beating up the narrow channel against wind and flood water coming down from Exmoor. When I ran aground, it was on the leeward mudbank. The Tohatsu started reasonably enough but still idled too quickly; the reserve shear pin sheared. I dropped the sail, winched up the keel a foot and paddled furiously off. Hoisting a tad of mainsail I veered off back towards Turf and gradually inched it back up. This time I was more careful. "See you at the Tally Ho" we agreed in yells as Roger and Colin set off for some real ditch crawling up the Exe above the M5 bridge. I sorted out the mooring and went to find my family.

Sue's grandfather in prosperous retirement moved from County Laois near Dublin to Exeter where he continued to raise his children, finally calling it a brood at 14. Some had become councillors and corporate executives, but tonight we supped with the rebel wing. Uncle Max had married Suzette, a pipe smoking NUPE convenor. As I ate egg and beans and talked politics with her, the ‘phone rang. It was interesting to hear her Devon burr intersecting with the precise architectural English of Bailer Barnes. "I am trying to locate an Andrew Morley..." "Yes, ee's yure..". It seemed that Roger needed some moral support.

Back at the Tally Ho, Barnes was unarchitecturally tipsy. However, the landlord's concerns were mainly sartorial and hygienic as Roger strode barefoot about the pub, wild-eyed and proclaiming Cartesian philosophy. We restored his shoes, removed his oilskins and sat him down, the landlord satisfied now that he had another stout minder. "Well I thought that tomorrow, we could set out along the coast and see how far we get. Teignmouth, the Dart…..."

"I was hoping we could do that sort of thing on Sunday" I countered "Saturday is Eloise's third birthday."

I lay in bed the next morning, trying to ignore a strong desire not to sail at all. I had said however that I would be on Black Jack around 9:15, so up I had to get. I loaded the Seagull and myself first into the car and 10 minutes later into the pram and then Black Jack. The Japanese usurper had been deposed the evening before. The boat was ready, I tried a pull on the starter rope, and to my relief the neglected outboard spluttered into life. However, fuel was spouting in a very unfriendly way from the carburettor, which I set to dismantle. Roger and Colin had arrived, I was still fiddling with a matchstick, impatience set it and I quickly put it back together. Now it would not start at all. "Damn" I said, too late forgetting Colin's presence "bit of the matchstick must have splintered off in there". No fuel at all could now be persuaded to spill when I held the tickler down. "I'm sure it's electrics" said Seagull expert Barnes.

We set off anyway, a strong ebb tide and stronger wind bore us swiftly along the meandering channel to Cockwood. I hung around while Roger explored, keeping well clear of the red painted port hand perch when, crunch ...I nose-dived to the cockpit floor. As I winched up the keel, I was grateful for those extra layers of epoxy and glass tissue I had applied the week before. They were certainly getting a good sanding. Turning windward showed how strong wind and tide were as newly fitted devices such as helm impeders demonstrated their drawbacks. "It's either a mooring buoy or the open sea" I thought. Roger's return decided us seawards and as we rounded the Polesand, I started to feel more relaxed. Once clear, we set a course on a beam reach for the distant amusement arcades on Dawlish Warren. As we neared, I hove to to prepare the anchor, then setting out once more gradually winched up the keel and spilled wind until I beached with a gentle grating, jumping off the bow into ankle-deep water. With the wind offshore from the NE, there was only a minuscule swell, on this day when gales were reported at sea.

I began to realise the cold as I followed Roger and Colin towards the smells of chips and donuts. I met them coming back from the car park. "We've just met your extended family" - a whole gaggle of cousins, second cousins and cousins by marriage had come to help Eloise celebrate being three at this amusement Arcadia, next to the Teletubbyland golf course. It was too cold for any of them to want to venture on to the nature reserve beyond. We ate some very windy chips washed down by welcome tea. We had arrived just before low water, and the boats seemed at rest, the sea-line hardly moving. Kieran, a cousin with a 22 footer (or so he boasts) lives on the Plymouth water-front, has his own slipway and did not envy us the sail back at all. It was time to fetch Eloise her birthday present from Black Jack when the pace changed. The tide had started to rise and the wind had freshened. The boat no longer lay obediently nose to the beach, but fretted and chafed and turned, Roger was already busy with Baggywrinkle and I ran to the sea. Quickly tethering her I raced back with the present, returning as fast. Roger had pointedly remarked on his altruism at sailing so far around the Polesand when coming for the sake of my heavy fin. I did not expect him to do the same on our return, and I left a brief message with Colin on the beach that I would be willing to try for Teignmouth or the Dart the following day.

Though I set out under reefed main alone, I unfurled a scrap of jib to help reduce the weather helm in the strong wind. Taking a reciprocal course to the one which had brought us to the Warren, I tried to estimate the time taken on the way there, and the time it was taking me now. When I thought I had it about right, I edged in, watching the small distant breakers on the sands, and picking out the red and green channel markers. I was anxious not to go too far East, fairly certain that it would be a beat back up the narrow channel along the beach. Then as I stood further in I began to see the disturbed sandy water on my port beam between me and the channel, clear in front of me, sandy again on my starboard bow. I remembered Roger's remark about The Riddle of the Sands as I bore away sharply. Just then, the wind freshened again markedly and I wondered, since Black Jack was behaving so violently on a broadish reach, how would I fare beating against it? At length the transit of a port-hand marker and some buildings that I had noticed in coming seemed about right and I safely reached to the buoys. I hardened up, tacking the narrow channel and found that the expected lee from the land was not, and the funnelled gusts were stronger than ever. I was repeatedly laid over on my beam ends as I made short exhausting tacks. The new fittings kept going wrong; the jib though reefed kept catching its sheet on the halyard cleats on almost every tack. It was a mess; knee deep in water I floundered up the channel, grateful that in such weather few people and few boats were about to see. Only the tide was with me.

I had a brief rest as I came up to the kink in the channel that goes round the end of the Warren and was able to do some bailing. Rounding the second bit of the dog's leg, I searched out the narrow channel that skirts the inside of the Warren around the Great Bull Hill bank and found that the wind was stronger inside the estuary than it had been on the seaward end. This time as I tacked through the moorings, I made good progress, now having the tide with me. There was that perch - I must keep well clear of the shingle spit. CRUNCH. Luckily the spit is narrow. Then, as I continued through the moored boats, I began to be confused. Were those really the channel marker buoys way over to the eastern bank? I cautiously made towards them from the moored boats and went aground again, this time in soft extensive mud. I took the opportunity to bail out, then risked winching the fin right up on the rising tide and drifted windily into the channel. This did not seem as safe as I would have liked. Although I was between a red and a green buoy, they were alarmingly close together and others that might continue the line were remarkably distant. I put in short tacks with distinct unease, but made some progress up river. Whatever happened, I did not want to go aground on a lee bank in this place and this wind, with a sulking Seagull. Eventually the feelings of unease were too great to bear and I headed back to the line of moored boats. My encounter with the mud was briefer and deeper than before, and I managed to pick up the channel as it swung westward.

By now, I was quite tired. I decided that I would pretend to be an automatum with specially enhanced powers of perception. I needed them because the pilot book and OS map were both dry but inaccessible in the cuddy whose entrance was blocked with keel-winching gear. At Starcross Yacht club the channel swung eastwards, and I set my course close hauled for a distant green witch's hat buoy, putting in the odd 30 foot tack to windward as and when I judged it necessary. The rising tide had covered the mud under a few inches of water, and I was sailing a four foot finger of lead-filled plywood through a narrow channel in this vast expanse of six inch deep water. I reached the witch's hat and the channel turned North. I put in short nervous tacks imagining the position of the channel until the buoy I had passed was a distant green speck while the one I was aiming for seemed no nearer in front of me. The tide was still my friend and I was making more of a fist of the tacking in this, my first proper sail of the season. The new helm impeder had jammed. Luckily the plastic hooks I had used at the end of the horse had come free as intended under stress and now I was back to the bare tiller flapping about as I rushed forward to free the jib sheet whenever it caught. Eventually I passed the friendly red can and headed NW for another witch's hat, preceded by a perch that I remembered lay well the wrong side of the edge of mud.

Salt spray afflicted my spectacles as I looked for the next mark. There in the distance was the Turf Inn, the dreamed of haven. Surely I should steer for that, avoiding at all cost the lee mud on my port side. At first, all seemed well, though the feeling of a dream increased as the powers of the automatum weakened. And then, it seemed I was not in a dream, but aground again. Wearily I passed a disgusting tissue across the inside of my encrusted glasses. Clear now I saw another green marker well to the south of the point for which I had been steering. I turned again to the winch handle, thankful that I was on the weather bank. Something was wrong, I flicked the pawl and wound it back. Now the mahogany beam lay aslant the hatch cover; I replaced it, noticing through a haze deep score marks in the wood from the wire cable. I tried to put the cable back as before, then saw the new pulley had collapsed, as had the old one. Winding up my energy instead of the now useless winch, I sheeted in the mainsail and the wind lay her over once again. Though more water flooded into the cockpit, Black Jack's keel angled up free of the mud and we blew back into the channel. I concentrated ferociously on avoiding the leeward bank and did not make enough allowance for the tide. Just at the wrong moment, an angry gust laid her over, and with tiller and mast at 45 degrees both, I was unable to hold her from coming up to windward.

Luckily, the channel buoy, unlike so many, had a soft rubber fender, and the glancing blow did little damage. Tired beyond belief, I tacked up an even narrower channel than before which reminded me of childhood encounters with Candle Dyke and the Ant, but instead of soft reed fringed banks, there were the tumbled boulders of the railway embankment on one side, and the hidden mud on the other. When finally I gained the slightly larger pool of deep water between the canal mouth and the Turf pontoon, my concentration went, and I tacked back and forth half a dozen times, trying to make a landing, reaching for boat-hooks and performing all manner of ineffectual actions. Then, I found myself somehow laid gently alongside the jetty, lifted and placed there by that same unseen hand that had once before plucked me and my motorbike from an Alpine hairpin bend, and put me safe in the middle of the road.

In what order I took down the sails, bailed out and tidied the mess I am not sure. One thing was certain; I was not going to tack up the narrow unseen channel to the Topsham mooring with my fin stuck down. Here, I was at least safe; I had a sleeping bag with me, could crawl into the cuddy and rest. Or walk to a taxi, or phone for a tow, or simply go to the inn and get drunk. Cheered at this prospect, the automatum perked up and started to coil ropes. Automatically, I tied one to the handle of the Seagull which I automatically unfastened and lifted into the cockpit. I unscrewed the bowl of the carburettor and confirmed the suspicion that at the beginning of the day, under the impatient eye of the baleful Bailer Barnes, I had put back the float the wrong way. I put it right, primed the Carb and this time, fuel seeped out. I slid a bit of cardboard in where the choke should have been and pulled. And pulled. On the third attempt, it coughed its way up a few octaves and I carefully nursed it into a steady rhythm. I let it run a few minutes while I tidied up some more. "Eat something" said a voice, and I did. Still the engine ran. "Now drink", the Seagull's tone did not falter. I cast off.

That automatum ain't half a bad driver; he coaxed my old car back to our rented 30 foot trailer without even a near miss. He mechanically stalked through the kitchen, where an uncorked bottle stood on the side. Stomp, stomp, stomp up to the gas fire, children fled screaming in terror at the dreadful countenance. "Fetch me wine" I demanded. Instead of the normal "get it yourself" Sue instantly complied under my glassy-eyed stare. Perhaps I should be an automatum more often.

I fell asleep by the fire, leaving my mobile phone switched on. Roger never did ring up that night to arrange his excursion for the next day. "Must have sneaked off to get away from me and my family entourage" I thought the next morning. Off went the phone "Hello, this is Roger Barnes speaking". "Hi Roger, I'm afraid I cant join you today, my winch is broken and I'm sure to run aground. You've got nice weather for it though". "Well actually, I'm at home, Colin was feeling rather cold". At the mention of Colin, a mental light bulb flickered on. How were the mighty fallen, Roger Barnes had been frog-marched home for Easter Sunday and was about to be given a jolly good churching. Hah! I had discovered his Achilles heel. And then, my evil glee turned to sympathy. I remembered how, as a small child in the 1960s, I had been forced into the horrible prickly tweedy suit with short trousers, that most unwise of all my mother's purchases. I remembered the hated white shirt, the awful tie, the long walk to the dismal draughty Victorian building where we would sit for hours to what end I knew not. "Quick Roger, pretend that you're going to get dressed and lock yourself in your bedroom. I'll zoom round in the car and park underneath the window; we can escape and bunk off and go sailing" These thoughts remained unspoken. That Colin wasn't a bad chap for an ex-monk. He must have been all right to go and play crew for one of Roger's exploits. "Oh well, I might see you in Appledore... Should I write something about this rally..?" I added innocently. "Yes please, it will save my time as I've so much else to do". He had no idea what he was letting himself in for. So we said our goodbyes, and I took my tribe for a hike around Woodbury common.