Green Wyvern Yachting Club
The May Day Holiday cruise has become a regular feature in the Green Wyvern calendar. The programme was always arranged by Tony Tomkins and it became, in recent years, the only time we saw Tony on the river. Tony would publish 'the plan' in the Newsletter and always include a reminder that motors had no place in a Green Wyvern cruise.
'Tis May perhaps ‘ere the snow shall have withered well off the heights.'
But since the highest ground we shall encounter will be Boaters’ Hill, I hope we shall be able to leave the thermal underwear in the drawer.
Assembling on the Friday evening at Reedham Ferry, we shall on Saturday morning take the flood tide (any time after 0700) to Rockland (HW about 1300). After lunch, we will use the ebb-tide to get back, via the Cut, to St Olaves (LW about 1900). Next morning, using as much flood as we are capable of (it will start rising about 0730), we will make a determined effort to reach Geldeston for lunch (HW about 1500). I am open to advice on whether to aim for the locks, or the village. After lunch, of course, we return to the Waveney House Hotel for the night. High Water in Beccles on Monday morning is about 0400: low vater in the Cut, about 0800: but the official cruise ends on Sunday evening, and I have no views on how to return to moorings.
Do children read this newsletter? If so, I strongly advise parents to conceal from them what follows. I am old-fashioned enough to think some things are not suitable for oung eyes.
I recently heard of a yachtsman sailing up the lower Waveney, intending to spend the night at 'The Bell' at St Olaves. When he reached the windmill at the beginning of the last reach before the bridge, the tide turned against him and the wind died to a south-easterly zephyr. This would, of course, have presented no problem to a GW skipper. Gaining perhaps six inches per tack, he would work his way up to the bridge until his forestay was leaning on it, then fling the weight, on a long line (and attached to the yacht) as far as he could forward. After taking down sails and mast, he would then pull the yacht, on the weight, forward under the bridge for his crew to grab it and shove him through. The whole manoeuvre would take, say, three hours, and he might even be in time for last orders. All straightforward and obvious, you may say. But there was nothing straightforward and everything devious about this yachtsman. Shall I tell you what he did?
When he reached the windmill, he switched on his engine.
Well, you can’t say I didn’t warn you. You would think, wouldn’t you, that after so many years in this sinful world, I would be enured against everything that life can throw at me. But, I can tell you, after hearing this story, I had to sit quietly for half an hour, with a brandy, and then another.
My crumb of comfort is that, whatever is perpetuated on May 6th, the 4th and 5th will be unclouded by such horrors.
Good sailing