Swinging the lamp

It all started quite innocently really back in the 70's. I'd done a bit of crewing and racing on dingies and cruisers - not much. I didn't intend for it to go this far. Then my wife Pauline and I did some boating together on rivers in this country and France. By chance one day in June 2000 we were walking above Lulworth Cove on a beautiful early summer's day. It was warm verging on hot with a fantastic westerly breeze to keep our temperature down as we stood gazing from the hilltop by Durdle Dor out across the blue sparkling sea below.

Then it happened. Some yachts, pure white sails in the powerful sunshine, were passing below us - on passage from Weymouth to the Solent I guess. I didn't mean to do it. "Wouldn't it be nice to have one of those" I mused innocently. "Yes" she said, completely unaware.

We looked and our hunger for more grew with each new sheet of details provided by the brokers. Before we knew it, we were doing it every weekend. "Maybe we could do it" we thought. "If we did, we'd have to wait until next March" we kidded ourselves.

March pah! By September we'd bought her. Magicienne, a Jeanneau Fantasia. 27 feet of loveliness and like all real addicts, we gorged ourselves for the 8 weeks before she came out for the winter. Of course our addiction led to other things just as bad - chandleries!

Our combined experience was "adequate" looking back and even then I was careful to check and understand the weather before setting out. I'd crewed a fireball dinghy occasionally with a friend, Ian Proctor (and won!), crewed a charter First 35 to Cherbourg and back and crewed various friends and acquaintances cruisers over the years. Pauline had crewed on river cruisers but has always been game to "have a go".

It was early October, the first time we took her out, I had a couple of days off work for a long weekend. We were going to Yarmouth, Poole, Cowes and home. I didn't think about tides, wind direction or any of that stuff - I never had to as crew - someone else had seen to all that but I'd never realised! We left Deacon's boatyard on the Hamble at about 7.30am on a Thursday morning in mid September. It was one of those early autumnal mornings - it really was. Talk about romantic. Very little wind. The river was silent and flat calm with a very slight mist rising off it. The sky a deep, deep azure with not a cloud to be seen as we puttered slowly along in our pristine oilies. Alone on the river, passing other wonderful yachts, low tree lined hills, crowds of waders on the mud flats and even huddled on some of the pontoons.

We hugged one another over a mug of tea and agreed that we were the luckiest people in the world. Pauline looked wonderful - her hair glowing in the sunshine and a big smile on her face. As we left the Hamble and Southampton Water a slight south westerly breeze came up (nicely) in the same direction as the easterly tide now flooding up the Solent - such innocence. "We'll try a little motor sailing" we agreed. Up went the main - no problem. "We'll try some proper sailing"…we were getting cocky. Out came the genoa (we didn't know it was called that then!) and we shut down the engine.

Silence. Just a slight gurgle of water along the side of the boat as she made way through the water….but not over the ground however. We came up to E Lepe buoy and tacked quite neatly for all our inexperience together as skipper and crew (although I say it myself!). Held that tack for 20 minutes, definitely making way against the land and tacked back again - well you do don't you. 10 minutes later we were back at the E Lepe. We tacked - 20 minutes, tacked again - 10 minutes…back at the E Lepe. Of course we then realised that this thing called tide had quite an effect! But we didn't care. "It's good tacking practice" I said to hide my embarrassment. But it was in a way true, we did gain a small amount of practice and as it happened with such lovely conditions - who cares! The sun was shining we were on our own boat and God was in his heaven…. we motored down to Yarmouth for our first evening afloat with a pint, steak and kidney pie and a roaring fire at the pub. This was just the beginning of a passion that has so many more good times than bad.

A little knowledge, they say, is a dangerous thing. It was certainly true as far as we were concerned. Having put into Yarmouth the previous evening and enjoyed a pint with steak and kidney pie, Pauline and I intended to go on to Poole. This was our first short voyage on our new yacht Magicienne in mid October. I'd dragged myself out of bed at what seemed a ridiculous hour to get the weather forecast - Force W 2/3 (great! - not too much wind), moderate visibility with rain later - then back to bed. We intended to enjoy our first cooked breakfast aboard and get away about 1100 because that was a convenient time. I'd made this passage as crew, a number of times on a friends yacht - out through Hurst narrows, left up the needles channel to The Bridge turn right and straight into Poole rounding the bar buoy - easy yes? No!

I'd studied the charts and could see exactly where I wanted to go - making a mental note of some of the buoys I'd be passing. Motoring out of Yarmouth in more or less flat calm we felt great - full of eggs and bacon and mugs of tea. We were very intrigued, as we began to enter Hurst narrows, by the nature of the surface of the water - the way patches on the surface slowly boil. I'd remembered from my crewing days the particularly nasty area of sea close to Hurst Castle, "the Trap" and with great sagacity pointed this out to Pauline - explaining how we should keep clear, whilst at the same time watching a small dinghy which had earlier left Keyhaven hug the shoreline - which I couldn't quite explain. The log was reading 4.5Kn so we'd be through in no time…. The dingy with no auxiliary power at all and beating to windward overtook us. I looked at the shoreline and realised we weren't moving at all.

Without thinking too much I increased engine speed and we gradually started to make a little headway. So using my engineering knowledge I suggested that if we turned South West we could hoist the sails and benefit from the slower tide to be found in shallower water - it only worked didn't it. We actually began to keep up with the dinghy!

Soon I could see the black and yellow buoy ahead that I knew to be The Bridge. It's worth noting that you haven't heard me refer to it as a Cardinal (let alone its designation) or refer to Port or Starboard Hand Marks. The simple reason for this was I'd never heard of them. I should however say that I knew that you left red buoys to port when entering etc and common sense told me to leave The Bridge on my left side. Despite our best efforts the dinghy had in fact outstripped us and was now lost to sight.

On reaching The Bridge we turned right and headed towards Poole. I could see Christchurch and just about make out Bournemouth and the cliffs South of Poole through the mist. Out to the South West rain was ominously falling from lowering clouds. Off course we were immediately headed by the wind and found ourselves running into the tide again as well. By this time we'd been "sailing" for about 2 hours. We dropped the sails.

Slowly, oh so slowly we proceeded towards Poole and all the time the rain clouds with their reducing visibility were coming towards us. I was starting to be concerned that soon I'd loose sight of the cliffs South of Poole and indeed of Christchurch which was even nearer. Then a very strange thing happened. The sea, which up until now had been relatively calm (although I didn't know it then, the wind was of course in the same direction as the tide), suddenly and out of nowhere turned into what I can only describe as a maelstrom. We didn't approach a rough area without seeing it although we'd noted the breakers on Shingle bank - it was just there, all around us for as far as we could see. Breaking waves approximately 4 to 6 feet high were coming at us from all angles. There was no regularity in them whatsoever - I had never seen or experienced this and my mouth did its best impression of the Gobi desert. Coyotes were howling. Tumble weed rolled down the dusty road that was my throat.

The problem was, I knew that the Shingles Bank was behind me and I was too frightened to be able to calculate the right course to avoid its Southern end. I just couldn't think in that detail. I elected to watch the depth and turn right of it fell below 4m (we draw 2m).

The next 15 minutes were somewhat hairy and my mouth suffered a water shortage of biblical proportions. I just set a course due East and hoped. Of course our speed over the ground shot up, the apparent wind fell away and in what seemed a very short time, considering how long we'd been going, we suddenly found ourselves in the very calm waters of Alum Bay. We fell into company with a couple of other yachts making their way back into the Solent. The stress and fear fell away like the layers of an onion. Pauline went below and rustled up tea and cake - oh that was soooo good. Half an hour later we were skimming through Hurst and thence scuttling back into Yarmouth.

We stayed in Yarmouth for the night (more beer and pie). I spoke to the wonderful Harbourmasters staff there and they were kind enough not to call me a complete t****r, explaining what had happened and when to leave Yarmouth dependant upon which direction your headed. Easy really. They didn't even smirk at one another. After consultation with the charts I discovered these areas with wavy lines on them (doesn't all the sea have waves on it?) and these wavy lines meant "overfalls". Further and deeper consultation of the notes on the chart told me "OVERFALLS - the Needles Channel in the vicinity of the Bridge may be subject to dangerous overfalls in heavy weather at all states of the tide".

At that point I realised that skippering was to crewing what chalk is to cheese. Looking back now, I suspect it wasn't as bad as it seemed at the time. The fact that we returned safely points to me reaching the right decision and although I couldn't plot a specific course my method should have kept us safe. We both resolved to enrol on the RYA Day Skipper theory course - the best move we ever made.