admin Date , July 10, 2025 Sailing Previous Blog 3 Races 2 finishes Comments (0)
There’s something you learn very quickly when sailing under high pressure – and no, I don’t mean the racing kind. I mean the meteorological sort. It often brings with it glorious warm weather, calm waters, and… absolutely no wind whatsoever.
This Wednesday was textbook: warm-ish, a bit cloudy, and with all the air movement of a politely held breath.
Did that stop the brave and the buoyant from taking to the water?
Of course not.
With no wind and only a faint river current, boats began to drift like bored ducks.
Within minutes of launch, Paul and I had our first tow job. A Zest had found itself stuck in a windless void, politely going nowhere. The helm gamely looped our tow rope round the mast (not the textbook technique, but effective), and we towed them gently up the river, delivering them into slightly less stationary air.
Shortly after, the Wayfarer got itself wedged in the entrance to the marina on the club side of the river – presumably in search of a coffee and a croissant. Billy, who had joined us on the safety boat, lobbed a line with the precision of a man who’s done this before, and we gave them a dignified drag out into the centre where they caught a teasing puff of wind and carried on.
We had two Zests rigged and launched, crews swapping between them like it was musical chairs with tillers. A Wayfarer also made its graceful way out onto the river – graceful, that is, until it didn’t. The wind, having lost all interest in the proceedings, disappeared entirely. The Wayfarer, left to its own devices, slowly and silently drifted toward a building on stilts, which just so happened to be mid-paint-job. We had, all morning, watched the poor painters awkwardly stretched out under the decking, brush in hand, painting the sides with monk-like patience. And then the Wayfarer, with tragic inevitability, gently smooshed itself into the fresh paint. Paul and I, manning the safety boat, swooped into action – but the damage was done. The crew emerged daubed like modern art students: paint on hands, boom, mast, and even the sail. The painters watched on in stunned silence. We pretended we didn’t see their expressions.
With the boats slowly ambling up and down the river, Paul and I seized the quiet moment to test Buoy-Cam – a floating camera rig we’d concocted, lashed to a buoy.
In theory: a brilliant idea.
In practice: the camera turned turtle and gave us stunning footage of the murky riverbed lots of weed and a confused-looking perch.
We have high hopes for Mark II, which will include a centreboard to keep it upright and, ideally, filming boats instead of silt.
After nearly three hours in the safety boat supporting our very chill fleet, it was time to recover Whaly, our faithful electric launch. We pushed it back over the railway line and up to its new berth. This area had been freshly filled with hardcore to stop the trailer wheels digging into the grass. To level it, we had found a prehistoric lawn roller (probably last used in the Edwardian era), and with Guy’s help, we spent a jolly half hour rolling and flattening the area until it was just about ready to hold the mighty boat and trailer combo.
All in all, it was a day of gentle winds, gentle rescues, and slightly less gentle paint scrapes. But no one capsized, everyone got some practice, and we got home with the boat, the safety kit, and most of our dignity intact.
