The plan was to sail around the Bell Rock, possibly swimming to it if the weather was fair – an early start in the sailing boat Columbine (yes it was named before the massacre) out of Anstruther Easter was agreed on with a good ten hour sailing out into the North Sea and returning down the Fife coast. The weather was looking good – everything was set and I had made it to Anstruther Fish Shop when there wasn’t the hour long queue and it was open – yum.

I woke early and Calum, owner of Columbine – Calumbine perhaps, and I munched breakfast bagels and packed the car. Anstruther has vertiginous walls and I passed down our goodies for the expedition on a rope. A passing salty seaman cautioned ‘You’d better start f*cking running – the tide is f*cking moving fast’ but Calum had already taken the yacht out from the inner drying harbour (leaving boats perched on mud) so we could finish loading in the outer harbour. So we would be ok. Sensible seamen.

All on board and engine going we motored out from the harbour wall and promptly stuck fast blocking both the inner harbour entrance and the lifeboat ramp. Another salty seaman kindly rowed to our assistance and with a rope attached to the harbour wall we tried winching ourselves off the mudflat to no avail – we were going to be there for hours – at least we brought plenty of coffee and food.

A succession of salty seaman and tourists wandered to the edge of the harbour wall to see the sight of stuck sailors sipping coffee – ‘What happened?’ they asked – I replied ‘Too Many Pies!’, that seemed to satisfy their curiousity. Others shouted – ‘You aren’t the first to get stuck and you won’t be the last’ which was nice – unless they thought it was us going to get stuck again another day. The outer harbour became totally dry, fortunately we had a bilge keel so the boat rested nicely on the mud. I thought I would make it to shore in case supplies ran low until the next high tide in 6 hours – jumped off the boat and promptly sunk up to the top of my Dubarry boots in mud. I managed to pull myself back in covering the decks, which Calum had spent the last hour cleaning, with a fresh coating of sludge. I was now fearing that if I did go for a swim at the Bell Rock, Calum might not be there when I got back.

It was interesting to see what actual channel there was in the Outer Harbour – it was mostly flat mud apart from a slight incline towards the harbour wall where fishing boats sat on their keels out of the mud. Another example of “don’t believe the chart depths as sand and mud do move and accumulate after they have been printed”

So coffee, gossip, a few sea shanties and the tide started to come back in again. I reduced the loading of the boat by abandoning it with me and my belly and muddy boots into the inflatable tender and rowed towards the harbour wall. We tied up the boat and Calum was trying to get the outboard engine working again, it was playing up now, as I chatted with a local cyclist who told me that a couple of weeks previously someone else did the same but they didn’t have a bilge keel so promptly fell over and the incoming tide swamped the boat before it could be rescued. So things weren’t that bad in retrospect.

Calum changed the outboard engine for a smaller one and we were all set again in the outer harbour with water under us (although less coffee and biscuits) but had abandoned the Bell Rock goal and decided to go to the Isle of May – we got out of the harbour into the playful Forth and that was when we found that the sail wouldn’t go up. The engine was smaller so it was not going to be sensible to rely on it with no sail so we returned to the harbour that we were imprisoned in for hours to tie up and lie in the sun watching the tourists promenade. Well I lay in the sun whilst Calum tried to climb up the mast to get the sail up, me having flatly refused to squeeze into a bosuns chair and get stuck up a mast.

All in all a great experience, great fun messing about in boats even when they are high and dry and there was the nice fish and chips. And our wives didn’t even have to call out the coastguard, which wouldn’t have mattered as we were blocking the lifeboat ramp anyway.

The title is from Shakespeare as Macbeth himself said, probably also thinking of his Easter trip from Hoo Ness Yacht Club up the Thames to Tower Bridge, a night in Saint Katharine Docks and back again via Erith Yacht Club.

A tad lighter than Birnam Wood I staggered on board laden with porridge oats for breakfast brose, a bottle of medicinal malt, an inflatable pillow, enough electronics to record the trip (3 GPS’s, 2 cameras – one of them waterproof just in case and a laptop full of electronic Admiralty charts) and is this a diving knife I see before me?

Taken out in the club motor boat, Heather, to our vessel at her moorings on the Medway we all grabbed our bunks by throwing our bags at them. Aurai, for those without a classical education is a winged nymph and daughter of the North Wind. She is also a thirty six foot, forty year old Nicholson yacht with gleaming varnished wood and even more gleaming electronics. Beautiful.

Provisioned by Eileen, who coincidentally had been Scottish Country Dancing in Kelso, and owned by Charles who had abandoned us for a better offer and weather and was somewhere inbetween the South of France and Greece. The motely crew consisted of Karen, Nick and myself (MacBerth) with Mark skippering on the way up the Thames and Graham skippering on the way down. The ghost of Banquo made up the accompaniment but snored terribly throughout the nights.

It was a gentle sail down to the Medway to Stangate where we were disturbingly told to follow small buoys, then anchored for the night and received a large pack of emergency flares from the Rear Commodore of Hoo Ness Yacht Club who also pointed out that our birgee of the club wasn’t flying so we immediately hoisted it up the flagpole, and then went hoisting it again the right way up, and making sure that the only real sailing law was complied wih – make sure the ensign is out after 8am and back in at sunset. A Chicken dinner from provisions together with a decent wine and hot cross buns settled us down and it was lights out for a quiet night. Did I really say quiet?

Stangate is on a set of mud flats which are populated by the largest squadron of the noisiest birds in the world. Birds go quiet in the night where I live, even owls retire at a respectable hour. Not here. I’ve got a loverly bunch of coconuts hollered one, whilst the others relayed tales of dodgy geezers darn sarf and discussed their appearances on Eastenders last night. All night with no respite.

In the dark I decided to pump up my inflatable pillow for comfort. Karen who was trying to get to sleep was entertained by the repeating sound from the dark bunk opposite of blow snort blow snort blow, then a raspberry as my tongue tries and fails to stop the air coming out, pant pant pant as I recover and then a pop as the stopper comes out and a soothing farting noise (which was not necessarily the air coming out of the pillow but may have been the effect of tinned potatoes on Banquos ghost). Once settled down I found that I didn’t actually fit entirely into the bunk and ended up like an Icelandic sailor in an elevated L position with a full complement of explosive flares beside my head.

Karen and I were commenting on the soothing gentle water sound we could hear above the birdsong, then as we listened to it more we were fast coming to the conclusion that this was perhaps not as soothing as we first thought. We were musing as to why the boat had a leaking cistern and since Karen was last in the loo, myself enjoying the freedom of trying to hit the birds from the stern with a rainbow stream of urine, I accusingly asked her if she had touched any sea cocks recently – which she veheremently denied. Nick emerged being kept awake not by the cacophony of bit part actors from Hitchcock’s The Birds, but complaining about the school pupils giggling from the main cabin like their first camping trip.

Being a practical man he opened the head (the loo for you landlubbers) and found his feet covered with what we sincerely hope was seawater. With a 3 million candlepower torch and with my pilot red LED light for dramatic effect he opened the toilet lid to reveal the onboard water feature – a fountain of seawater was flooding the boat and testing out my Dubarry seaboots waterproofness. Seacocks shut, a faulty valve diagnosed and the cabin floor drained into the bilge we returned to sleep happy in the knowledge we were still afloat. That was when Banquo’s ghost decided to start snorting but we were all too tired to be bothered.

We had to wake early to take advantage of the slack water to get out of the Medway and grab the up escalator of the flood tide up the Thames. I took the helm and powered by breakfast brose didn’t let go until we were berthed in St Katharine Docks 8 hours later. From a grey morning the day continued in a grey frame of greyness we thought back
to Charles in the Med. Our Med, the Medway, had colourful containers and huge gas spheres on ships and this was mirrored in the Thames estuary. There was no movement though – from the estuary upwards we saw very very little traffic although our concentration was on the depth gauge as the sand banks at low tide were gently running under our keel – even with 6 GPS’s on board and paper charts blowing in the breeze sand banks tend to move about a bit in the search to embarrass a sailor by leaving his boat high and dry as the rest of the regatta passes taking photographs. Thankfully that didn’t happen to us, not with me on the wheel – or more correctly with Mark gently suggesting that steering the boat directly at an exposed sandbank might not be the best strategy to avoid them.

We fantasised that we were in an episode of Survivors – reinforced by the Queen Elizabeth II bridge filled with fleeing road traffic and there was anonymous shooting as we sped upstream away from it. I idly took a shortcut across the empty river, when Mark pointed out as well as a breach of the river etiquette (ratty and mole would be turning in their watery graves) but the Thames Clipper taxis would take us out at their high speed. Of course the reason we were on the wrong side of the river is also a consequence of studying the GPS’s colour screen with the arrow being your boat rather than looking to where I was…

The river taxis appeared and so did their wake – a series of tsunamis hit the boat and we were hanging on an Alton Tower rollercoaster ride – Old Father Thames get your tickets here. The Mayor of London Woolwich ferry did a passable impersonation of the naval equivalent of Spielbergs movie Duel by menacing us at close quarters, and a huge
container ship in parallel with us theatened to turn across our bows in a let’s see what you are made of approach. Low flying aircraft approaching or leaving City Airport provided a distraction and as we motored towards the Thames barrier London started to appear from its Eastender industrial wasteland. We pass Barking so I knew the Isle of Dogs could not be far – yes no-one laughed when I said it onboard either.

The Thames barrier looks impressive with large red crosses on every entrance and a single green arrow subliminly reading ‘really this is the one to aim at and stop looking at the other wider entrances’. It looks even more narrow as we passed through Golf with some interesting side swell and whirlpools but we steered through and avoided a friendly kiss from the barrier and passed on out way up passing the Millenium Dome (which everyone seems to call O2 these days), the delights of the buildings of Greenwich and the Royal Observatory and the passenger tunnel under the Thames (visible only by its domed entrances I hasten to add). Expensive flats from converted wharf buildings lined each side as I spy the Tower Bridge, with my legs buckling under their uninterrupted stand. A police launch with lights comes steaming up and everyone looks accusingly at their helmsman – thankfully it sped past with nary a look at us. The lock entrance to the docks made Golf entrance through the Thames Barrier look positively Fern Britton (cockney rhyming slang for wide) – but we had to attach to a mooring buoy in front of Tower Bridge whilst missing the Royal Navy pontoon building and the Rear Commodore who was
ironically in front of us. Nick and Karen hung off the front of the boat whilst I steered us into the mooring buoy and Mark covered the dodgy throttle. Success. We could now bob around in the wake of tourist boats safely.

The lock opened on time and we cast off and dived through the lock gates and I got us perfectly to the side in the piercing gaze of the Rear Commodore (appropriately behind us now) and hundreds of tourists with cameras, tied up waiting for other boats to enter. We were now a tourist attraction with us appearing on lots of tourist photos. One lady came up took a photo of Aurai and said ‘Beautiful’, instinctively from the helm I replied ‘thanks I am’.

The lock gate opened and a bridge opened up and another bridge parted and we were through and ready to park beside the much needed toilet block (there is an unsaid don’t shit on the boat rule). After my last sailing trip where we took out the light on Tobermory pontoon I was playing safe so took a parallel course but ended up 7 feet away from the pontoon. Mark managed to get us close enough for Karen and Nick to leap ashore and pull us in safely. Fortunately there were no tourists to watch that less than impressive move. Talking about movement once tied up there was a scrabble and a run to the toilet block. I even got a mention in despatches for the textbook helmanship for the mooring pickup although my ‘more luck than judgement’ reply was quickly accepted disappointingly. We retired to the Dickins Inn for beers and to thank Mark for getting us here in one piece and to meet Graham who was going to get us back again.

My offer of a ‘Jack the Ripper’ wander through Whitechapel was turned down by the others and we dined in a dockside Italian exchanging colourful stories of past adventures and Nick’s fantasy about amazonian women with measuring sticks. We settled down for the night and the combination of Italian food and wine, combined with finding and removing a large chart box from the foot of my bunk allowing me to stretch out, allowing Banquo’s ghost to snore the night away. It wasn’t just the snoring apparently that disturbed Karen (and the rest of the crew with hearing) – during the night Banquo or MacBerth shouted out the word
that even the Sex Pistols did not use. Since Karens surname was Hunt it was a plausible explanation that I was doing a crew roll and K Hunt was on the list. The complaint of snoring fom Karen was particularly impressive as she had been telling us earlier about her deafness thanks to antifouling intrusion – then again I can rival that church scene in the Witches of Eastwick.

Easter Sunday – time to get up and take advantage of our 36 pounds per night for 4 persons rent just down from Tower Bridge. I was out in the gloom snapping away and grabbed a double espresso and Observer from Starbucks dockside. We breakfasted with Riverside specials and then whilst Nick and Graham fixed the dodgy throttle on the diesel engine (with no wind we were not going to be sailing anywhere). The paraffin stove was being slowly primed by paraffin as we couldn’t find any meths and I refused to let my malt whisky be used understandably. Karen and I had a provisioning role now – get enough food for tonight and lets get going. We set off and found Waitrose, Tesco and Sainsbury closed for Easter and following a spot of Eucharist in All Hallows by the Tower, a wander down Mincing and Pudding Lanes to the monument, guiding a tourist to Fenchurch Street Station using my navigation knowledge of the Monopoly board and a walk back via the Tower of London to a dockside tavern for Japanese lager – we returned to let everyone know that we had had a good time but had failed at the primary mission and the option was to buy an uncooked Italian meal from the dockside restaurant. Thankfully Graham and Nick were in a good mood as the engine was fixed, unstalled and the dodgy throttle was dodgy no longer. We even had meths and the cooker ignited immediately with no stench of paraffin attached to us.

Karen and I queued up to be told ‘sorry we have no tables the couple in front of you got the last table’ – we replied that we actually wanted uncooked food to take away to our yacht and the managers eyes lit up helpfully (or perhaps greedily – it is always difficult to tell the difference just using pupil dilation). Shortly after a lasagne for 6 hungry sailors (yes I know there were only 4 of us but it came in packs of 6 and there was supposed to be another 2 of us who couldn’t make the trip), part cooked garlic bread and two lampshade bases filled with Chianti were in our hands along with a bill for over 90 quid. My wife in her best LDN accent on hearing this said ‘u wuz robbed’, especially as she pointed out a Lidl lasagne for 6 at 2 pounds 50. It did however make for a splendid dinner and Graham did say it was the largest meal he had ever seen cooked on Aurai so we possibly set a precendent here. I must add that Graham brought along his home grown (in his neighbours garden) sprouting broccoli which went exceptionally well.

We motored down to the Thames barrier again and through Charlie gate to Erith Yacht Club where Nick did a great FerryGlide through a couple of yachts in a strong current to attach to a mooring buoy and we got picked up and taken to the Clubhouse which was on a splendid old ferry (the shadow of which appears on Google Earth). A few beers later and it was back in the dark to the boat and the feast whilst the others went off to KFC we were Italian dining then out to overlook the view of the Thames and moored boats in the
silence.

Easter Monday and it was off early in the mist under the empty QEII bridge and I helmed her back into the Medway over shallow sandbanks again and passing Gravesend the Chart Plotter showed nothing beyond Gravesend and menacingly the mist hid anything beyond too. This really was World’s End we thought.

We were joined up in the Thames estuary, and up the Medway, with a line of yachts and made our way back to Hoo, tidied the boat, said our farewell to it and Heather took us back on shore where we squared up our debts, group hugs – when shall we three meet again, in thunder lightning or in rain – and departed in different directions, myself to Greenwich to meet with Lady Macberth washing her hands in the Novotel, but there lies another tale.

Overall a fantastic experience and a great set of people to meet and keep awake snoring. Charles was incredibly generous to both lend us Aurai and to assume we wouldn’t sink it although the boat guardians of Graham and Mark did a splendid job in keeping me from doing exactly that – they spent time away from their family at Easter to do so. I did too of course but the family quite like me being away.

I learned a lot as I always do, having so much to learn, but epecially to remember to bring the correct set of Admiralty electronic charts – having not loaded the Thames ones but instead the West Coast of Scotland ones – still if we had gone seriously off course they may have come in handy then.

The Animal Health letter shouted through the envelope … Don’t move we have you covered. A quick phone call elucidated the relevant facts – we probably sent you a letter 5 months ago and since you haven’t complied you cannot move your cattle. ‘Cow’ I said, ‘cattle is a collective and I only have one, and I normally move her to a stall on the next farm where the vet can prod in safety’.

‘You can’t move her’.

‘She has horns and is not tame’. Stalemate.

It would have been helpful to be sent something saying we are going to freeze your cow – get a vet in asap you itinerant yokel – but bureacracy tends to thrive on fascism more than helpfulness so I now have the wonderful situation of having to look at getting Flora locked in a sheep box so the vet can do a TB test – so the vet, and also importantly ourselves, don’t get gored.

Ali and I discovered that the wooden box only had three sides now as Flora or the sheep had dismantled one side and pooed all over it. The weight of poo made it impossible or at least undesirable to lift. Ali scraped a lot of the poo off with a stick. This was shaping up to be a very unpleasant birthday (which had already started with unwrapping my first present – an ipood – a collapsible trowel for shovelling your own excrement into a red bag stored in its handle for when in the wilderness).

Our wellies were proving themselves amazingly slippery and I almost slipped into the mud and poo mix a few times. I must rent the field out for World War One location shoots.

Food in the box and Flora was there with suspicious sheep eyeing the situation. Flora in, wooden gate locked into place – Kim and I had to shove the heavy wooden gate into place using a spade to lever it out of the mud with all of my weight used to push it forward. Chain locked it – perfect with the vet due to arrive at 2pm. She arrived at 2.07. Flora broke out of the box at 2.05 – simply leaned against the gate and seperated gate and chain in one fell swoop – Houdini would have been impressed.

Flora was now running around the field in a ‘Born Free’ sort of scamper and a bit of hay in a feeding tray attracted her attention. Ali’s chum Ben was shaking his nuts (steady, this is cattle feed) and the Irish girl vet armed with 2 huge syringes was assessing the situation. ‘Right so if you push her towards the fence I will stab her in the neck.’ she breathed so Flora couldn’t hear her.

I asked if she had a halter and she produced a sparkling clean white piece of rope with a perfect Bowline in it. Flora is not stupid, when someone lassoos her horn she immediately throws it off. So it took some time before Ali managed to hook both horns and Flora’s neck and she promptly then pulled backwards and the entire rope was now under the control of Flora. It took a bit of time to actually get it untangled from her to give back to the vet who was looking more and more worried whether she would ever get it back.

Ali idly asked – ‘what normally happens when you stab a cow in the neck?’ – ‘oh christ they normally shake their head around something awful – ah horns’ the vet deduced a problem quickly, before adding ‘Lets give it a try anyway’ in that happy go lucky Irish way.

Leaning over the fence she managed to electrocute her breasts on the electric fence that I assumed wasn’t working. Ali started to hand feed Flora and the vet stabbed a syringe into her neck and as predicted there were horns everywhere and I was the only person on her side of the fence and very quickly at the other end of the field disconnecting the electrical source.

One syringe down, one to go – Ali bravely waved hay again and Ben waved his nuts and Flora was showing interest and a remarkable degree of forgetfulness as the second syringe plunged into her neck. Job done just wait 3 days and we can rub her neck and see if all is well.

The vet arrived early for the test looked through binoculars to make sure all was well and drove away quickly.

——————-
Music of the Month — Water Line by Sage Francis

I just sit there
And let the thoughts flood
And I remind myself, “It’s all right, it’s all good, it’s all love”
It’s not though
Cause there’s a kink in the armor
A pot hole I’m sinking in
While I think of the drama
So I stand up
Start to pace in my living room
Set my eye to the highway knowing that I’ll play chicken soon
There’s a vanity plate with my name on it
There’s a Davey Crockett hat with a Masonic fat cat under it
A musket rifle spitting at my feet
They want me to dance in the middle of the street
And I respect my elders, so I do as I’m told
But I offset the bell curve when I do it with soul
Losing control
Guilty feet do have rhythm
They just dance to the wrong theme music to amuse the villain
Instead of killing, I’ll spare the raccoon
And start filling sandbags as I stare at the moon and let the thoughts flood
Blessed are those who are dammed
When the levee broke
How many choked on the steps to a slow dance?
A staircase to a hug with no hands
Accountability hung out to dry on the line of command
We let the thoughts flood
We remind ourselves “It’s all right, it’s all good, it’s all love”
It’s not though
Cause there’s a kink in the armor
A pot hole I’m sinking in
Sharing a drink with my father
It’s a family affair
The vanity we share
The waterline is rising
All we do is stand there

It is important to realise that at this time of year there are fundamental reasons that Christmas exists – and after listening to all superb 10 hours of ‘A Man Born to Be King’ by Dorothy L Sayers (yes it was a crime after all and a bit of mystery too) my interest was piqued to see what else this great man was teaching the world and lo I came across this Christmas message for everyone from Jesus (Luke 14:26)

If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters—yes, even his own life—he cannot be my disciple.

So Goodwill to all men and women but not to the family or yourself – makes sense to me – although I guess the Roman leaders needed psychiatric treatment themselves

And from a great writer from this year – M.I.A.
No-one on the corner has swagga like us

Merry Winter Solstice