Throughout 2011, I perfected the art of leaving ‘Corsair’ on a convenient mooring between sailing, rather than necessarily slogging back to Brundall each weekend.
Mostly – this worked well, I did occasionally take a ‘flexible’ view of the Broads Authority 24 hour moorings to facilitate this, but at this point of course I’m duty-bound to point out all fictitious references to that sort of thing should be treated as baseless rumour…
Anyway – the cruise for 2011 was to be a Northern rivers affair, especially as we’d covered a significant portion of the southern rivers in our ‘normal’ sailing having moved to Brundall.
Day 1
With news of the Reedham riverside beer festival ringing in my ears – ‘Corsair’ motored downstream in cool, calm conditions. Typically – we’d be gathering crew / boats today & tomorrow.
Meeting RCC S/N219 ‘Farthing’ moored up en-route – exchanging muted greetings across the river & above the engine noise (!). Maybe they were shouting? Who knows… Anyway. We moored just upstream of the BA hut on Reedham quay, to await the arrival of Binky on the 20:00 train.
Duly aboard – we agreed a quick dinner was the best approach, lets get at the beer!
There was however much consternation from Mr B – he’d not yet had the ‘pleasure’ of being upclose & personal with a primus stove… and I was still learning!
To be fair, the flames did die down… but he’s still twitchy from our last fire onboard. (another story!)
Before we could get ashore however, with shades of Michael Green… we’d found ourselves in possesion of a cat! Quite how the bloody thing got aboard is one mystery we’ll never resolve. The ‘shadow puppet’ theatre for the quay-side as the awning buckled/bulged/swayed to the tune of “bugger off! Come here, whose fucking cat is this anyway!?” Must have been popular.
Order restored, we swiftly walked to the Lord Nelson to calm our nerves…
Much later, nerves calmed, we were ‘treated’ to some solo kazoo playing, from ‘The Harvs’ band. Wishing them great fortunes, we retired to the boat.
Early tide tomorrow.
Night.
A Broadsman 