Green Wyvern Yachting Club
No apologies for including a second piece by Tony in this section. Tony wrote the following on the occasion of the 35th anniversary of the Club.
As the 35th anniversary cruise of the Green Wyvern approaches, I realise, with alarm and pleasure, that I have been a member of the Club for over 30years . . . alarm because it means I am getting old, pleasure, because we are both still here, and still together.
My first cruise was a second Easter Week, with Dave Kirby as skipper, on Pirate, which later met its untimely end under another illustrious skipper, on Reedham Swing Bridge. We sailed from Norwich to Horning, but I honestly cannot remember much else about the week. I prepared a meal or two, but did not find myself often at the end of the tiller, or a rope. But I had no complaints; Dave unquestionably took a right view of my abilities. I later discovered that my initiation occurred in the week following, one which has since entered Green Wyvern folk-lore, when the fleet was storm-bound for three days in Womack dyke. This, no doubt, accounted for the slightly shell-shocked demeanour of those who remained for the full fortnight.
In those days the fleet was entirely hired, mainly from Banhams at Horning ... Hornets and Amorita for the commodores and others who knew what they were about, Moons for the tyros. The awesome was Hope, from Burgh Castle, which we were all very content for Cecil to sail as often as possible. The mighty vessel struck terror not only through its colossal size but also through its tendency to fall to bits. George Matthews was convinced that the keel would fall off, on the perfectly reasonable grounds that everything else had already done so. But Cecil, stern educationalist as well as accomplished yachtsman, insisted that every experienced skipper should demonstrate his arts on Hope. To be asked to take her was therefore felt to be a great honour, though pride in having finally 'arrived' was lost in nightmares and panic in the days immediately before actually taking command.
My first command was a Moon, and I had to sail it into Yarmouth from the north. Cecil made no attempt to mitigate the potential horrors. 'When you reach the Yacht Station', he said, 'the wind will be abaft the beam on port. The natural manoeuvre will be to shoot up into the wind towards the quay. But if you do that opposite where you want to moor, (with a kindly twinkle), the tide will sweep you down onto the bridge. So you must turn well before where you want to go. In the event, these remarks stirred up so much angst in me that I spent most of the afternoon on the mud-banks; when I reached Yarmouth an hour late on the tide, the river was like a mill-pond, and I made my simplest mooring of the week.
I haven’t fallen in very often, but once I did it in style. My dinghy, with a boy sitting in it, came loose. My recovering manoeuvre was masterly. I went about again, and approached it on a fast close haul. Leaving the mate on the helm, I stood
on the after deck, stooped, and seized the painter. I then shot into air, entered the water head first, and surfaced underneath the dinghy, with ample opportunity to meditate on relative velocity,
I have sunk, or, rather, been on my way towards the river-bed, twice. On the second occasion, I tacked Stella through Reedham Ferry, rather too near the bank
. . . in fact, I hit it hard, a glancing blow. By the time I got to Cantley sugar factory, I was aware of a certain sluggishness through the water, and when a floor-board floated out of the cabin into the well, I sensed that things were not entirely as they should be. But I turned the situation, like Dunkirk, into my finest hour, by driving Stella firmly up Cantley dyke, and the tide, after closing time, having dropped sufficiently, effected the classic repair with the oiled tea-towel and the flattened baked bean tin.
I once sailed from Hickling to Reedham in one day between 9.00 a.m. and
4.50 p.m. I have also spent a day sailing from Womack to Thurne on the awning. Cecil claims to have seen me once sail Stella backwards out of a dyke near Somerleyton faster than he had seen me sail forwards . . . a claim I have never known quite how to take (uncharacteristic exaggeration? unnecessary sarcasm?). In that amazing commemoration cruise of 1967, when most of Norfolk and Suffolk disappeared under flood water, I bent my rudder sailing over the top of the fence by Haddiscoe railway bridge. And still I come back for more.
I am often asked . . . no, that’s not true; no one has ever asked me, but I’ll tell you anyhow . . . how the Club now differs from the early days. To start with, we do much less singing, though I think this may be because of George’s sadly rare appearances; it was he, I think, who got us raising the roof, and whenever he re-joins us, the old days come back again, in this respect, at any note. Again, we are now far kinder and friendlier than we used to he to other river-users. Most other yachtsmen are now our friends, and we no longer require cruisers to be manned exclusively by people with an I.Q. of 140+. And we recruit, of course, from a much wider area. Some of the old faces, too, I would dearly love to see on the river again . . . Nev, Mike, John. After nearly twenty years, I still miss Bert. But what is really surprising about our Club, after 55 years, is how so little else has changed. The structure remains intact, and so do the principles of good sailing and good company. They knew what they were about in 1947, didn’t they?.
ART
1982