Whilst moored in Lowestoft harbour one quiet afternoon we heard the pilot come down to his boat. It was kept on a chain mooring in the corner opposite the yacht club.
The engine started and leapt into action. Then there was a dreadful graunching sound and the rattle of chain brought to its limit and the boat was jerked to a stop. Everything went silent.
We looked out and saw the pilot sitting in his boat and then –
“that’s the second time this week!!!”
BILL and GLORIANA “FRENCH MELODY”
Before we had a boat we used to charter and this particular year we chartered a Contessa 26 from Brixham in Devon. The owner turned out to be a lecturer at Bristol University who ran a charter business and chandlery in his spare time. So if anything went wrong he had to come down from Bristol to fix it and do any changeovers.
Our Contessa was yellow and called Sunshine and had a Vire petrol engine.
Brixham was a busy little town set against a cliff backdrop where there were hundreds of nesting sea birds. Everywhere there were car or window stickers which proclaimed ‘Keep Brixham tidy – eat a seagull a day!’
The small harbour faced Northeast onto Torbay and had no marina as it does now.
From the beginning the engine gave us trouble especially when the throttle was opened. However it always restarted and we decided to move down the coast to Salcombe on a lovely sunny day. We had a brisk sail round Berry Head, across Start Bay, round Start Point and arrived at the appropriate time to take the tide in. Salcombe lies about a mile from the coast at the end of a winding rhea, a valley drowned by the sea. The entrance is guarded by a rock bar, which can at times be extremely dangerous - but not today.
Once over the bar we started the engine but almost immediately it died. Bill had the engine steps off and attempted to revive it whilst I kept the boat heading in the right direction. By this time the wind had dropped to nothing and it was difficult to hold a course. However before long the sails filled and I called down confidently that I had everything in hand as now we had some wind. Alas no engine revival.
Just before we reached the right-angled bend where the holidaymakers were having a good time on the beach Bill appeared up and grasped the situation. No wind at all but we were rushing into Salcombe at a helter skelter rate on the incoming tide and we were going to be deposited without ceremony among some very expensive yachts.
Immediate activity produced the anchor and we dropped it letting all chain go in what turned out to be a deep pool. Eventually it began to bite and we slewed to a stop engaging our jack staff in the guardrails of a neighbouring yacht. – but fortunately not a scratch. As we looked around we realised we were the centre of attention with heads appearing out of hatches like meercats.
The harbour master approached in his launch telling us we could not anchor there and we could see we were exactly in the path of the lifeboat. Explanations followed and he towed us to his own mooring telling us we could stay for the remainder of the week.
Eventually we doctored the engine and got ourselves back to Brixham. Later we learned that the previous charterers had stripped the engine looking for a fault not realising that they were only out of fuel. They had replaced the filter back to front which starved the engine of air every time the throttle was opened.
BILL and GLORIANA “FRENCH MELODY”