BROADSMANSHIP

by Tony Tomkins

 

You may love the Broads, you may sail for hours or weeks in your own yacht, or someone else's, but are you a Broadsman? Tony sets out his views on Broadsmanship.


How many ways are there of enjoying the possession of a Broads yacht? Dozens, I imagine; one should never set limits in human ingenuity. But four spring to mind:

Caravanning

The yacht is used as a base for a family holiday, like a houseboat. If you enjoy the East Anglian countryside, this can, I think, be a very agreeable use of your yacht.

Pub-crawling

In my youth I was addicted to this and I once organised a crawl up the Yare, starting at The Ship at Reedham. Henry Irving (who else?) got as far as Bramerton (or was it Thorpe?). But now, alas!

. . . Age, with his stealing steps
Hath clawed me in his clutch,
And hath shipped me into the land,
As if I had never been such.

The best I can manage nowadays is a small orange juice at lunch-time and, perhaps, half a pint of thin ale in the evening.

Racing

This can give great pleasure and obviously encourages owners to get the best out of their craft, as regards speed and manoeuvring. In me it arouses three adverse emotions:

a) Doubt
Since the same yacht can behave like a swallow with one helmsman and like a Sheffield tram with another, how can a handicap be other than guesswork .... an uneasy compromise between a yacht's absolute potential and the skill of its current owner?

b) Arrogance
Why should I need to prove how good I am?

c) Dissatisfaction
Some races (Three Rivers, Round the Island) are better than others, but does any of them give scope for more than a fraction of Broads sailing skills?

Which brings me to my remaining way of making use of a Broads yacht, namely

Broadsmanship

Activities should be described by reference to all their physical conditions, not just a selection of them. Football, for example, would be a different game it were played on a circular pitch with the goals back to back in the middle, even if the rules for moving the ball around remained the same. Similarly with sailing. You have to put your helm up whether you are on Wroxham Broad or the Sea of Japan, but apart from the basic techniques of sailing, moving a yacht around the Broads is a unique art, and it is, in my view, perverse to attempt to convert these waterways into a kind of poor man's Cowes.

And not only perverse. It is also to miss most of the fun of owning a Broads yacht, which consists of accepting, triumphing over and rejoicing in the special conditions pertaining. What are these conditions? The rivers and Broads are:

i) Shallow
The Broadsman learns from experience and observation the places where the river bed gets too near the surface, and he remembers them. Where his memory fails, or a new impediment takes him by surprise, he make use of his expertise with a quant to disentangle himself with the minimum of expenditure of time and effort.

ii) Narrow (and meandering)
Tacking and the trimming of sails are fine arts on the Broads. The Broadsman can tack the Ant, some of the Chet, either way, and when he hasn't room to get sideways to the wind, he is expert at using his quant for its other purpose, of propulsion. It goes without saying that he regards the mere possession of an outboard engine as a defeat. There is no Broadsmanship in moving forward with one of them behind you.

iii) Tidal
Early in his career, the Broadsman learns that you don't try to tack through Reedham Bridge against the full ebb. Later, he becomes deft in making the tides work for him, smoothly covering astonishing distances with the assistance of the merest zephyr.

iv) Shared
By fisherman (marginally) and motor cruisers (in a big way). Early in his career, these cause the green Broadsman endless trouble. He sweeps away rods, crashes into cruisers, has them crash into him, and goes half-way up banks in frantic evasive action. Later, the passage of his keel through the water drives fish towards the waiting hooks. It is joy for him to beat up the Bure out of Yarmouth, pursued by half the hire fleets in Norfolk and Suffolk and confronted by the other half. How exactly he hangs up just long enough for them to pass! With what grace he waves them cheerily on! No longer loutish hullabaloos, but fellow travellers through this Vale of Tears.

v) Be-bridged
In addition to that curious contraption at Martham, and the stumps at Aldeby and Haddiscoe, progress is impeded by twenty-two bridges . . . one lifting, two swing and, as far as yachts are concerned, nineteen fixed; thirty-one (total) if you want to go to New Mills, Trowse, Honing and Ellingham. The Broadsman is an expert at getting through all of them with the minimum of fuss. When he shoots a bridge, his forestay touches the arch as his mast comes down, and his burgee brushes it when he raises. He can also get through a bridge against an ebb tide and a head wind without recourse to mechanical power and without setting a foot on shore (for the trifling fee of £5 I will be happy to tell you how. £1 coins, please, or a used note.) The Broadsman loves the flashing lights and clanging horns of the new Breydon Bridge, and did not join the chorus of misery which preceded its construction ('Woe is woe' 'Never go North/South again' 'End of Broads sailing as we know it. etc.) On the contrary he looks forward to the challenge to be presented by future bridges by-passing Wroxham and Norwich. Yet more opportunities to display expertise and exercise ingenuity!

These five characteristics of the Broads make them a unique are for sailing, and in combination they set special problems in, say, making and leaving moorings. I think the most hair-raising mooring to get into is The Ship at Reedham but the most technically difficult is probably Cantley. The sailor who can drop neatly into a slot no more than three feet longer that his yacht at Cantley, on a brisk south-easter . . . he is a Broadsman. So is anyone who can get away from a dead leeward mooring in a force four, anywhere.

To sum up: a Broadsman is a person who can get his yacht to any navigable part of the Broads (i.e. anywhere which leaves him six inches of water on either side and underneath) without mechanical power, without making other Broads users apoplectic, without driving his crew insane, without giving himself a heart condition. In a word, elegantly.

And a Broadsman is still, after all these years, what I would like to be. The acquisition of the skills described above has been what has fascinated me about the Broads from the start. And it is because I am still so far off perfecting them that I go on being fascinated.


ART 1989

A lunchtime halt. Roger, Tony and Gordon enjoying the pleasures of Summer.