Dad woke me up really early this morning because we were going to go and collect Grandad and then go down to Whitstable to go out on our Wanderer to watch the barge match from the water.  Unfortunately when we got to Grandad’s house Nanny told us that he’d hurt his back and couldn’t come with us. So we set out to Whitstable without him.

When we got to Whitstable we rigged the boat up and got into our kit, then we sailed out towards Seasalter.  

A good turnout of boats – 6 Whitstable Wanderers, and 3 visitors from Crawley (a Wanderer, a Wayfarer and an Enterprise) set off at 8.40, headed for the match start line off the Sand End buoy in the Swale.   The sea was very flat and calm, which I liked but Dad didn’t because we weren’t going very fast, but as we were on a cruise, and not racing, it didn’t matter.  Sally Turley took the opportunity to read her book “The Waves” by Virginia Woolf;  Steve thought it was a sailing instruction manual!

We arrived in the vicinity of the first part of the racing fleet about an hour later.  You can see such large boats on the horizon for a considerable distance away, but they really are impressive close up.  Five times as long as a Wanderer and three times as high – that’s quite a contrast, as the rest of the family watching from the beach pointed out.  Fortunately for us, but not for the racers, the wind dropped at this point so we were able to spend a lot of time buzzing around amongst the fleet with no danger of being mown down or of them disappearing over the horizon before we could get a proper look.

There were 7 Wanderers 1 Wayfarer and 1 Enterprise all together and about 50 barges.  There were lots of different races for different sized boats, ranging from large Thames barges to small fishing smacks.  I took lots of photos while we were sailing among the big boats.  While we were cruising along we had breakfast on the boat and then we cruised around a bit more before sailing back to Whitstable with the other Wanderers. The way back was much more fun for me because Dad let me helm the boat.

After a couple of hours’ viewing we gathered up the fleet and headed for home – a single tack in a gentle breeze.  As we arrived back at Whitstable the B14 and Musto fleets, staging their National championships, abandoned their racing for the day and we had a second spectacular show as they all came ashore behind us.  The racing got more spectacular for them as the weekend progressed!

When we got back I had a shower, got dressed, helped de-rig the boat, then went home for a sleep.

Participants:

Wanderers:

463            Chris and Rose Partington
792            Steve and Marilyn Clarke
989            Mark and Hannah Fagg
1098          Ian and Glenda Nevill
1282          Gavin Barr and Bob Anderson
1469          Paul Hewett and Pete Taw (Crawley CMYC)
1492          Steve and Sally Turley

Wayfarer:

Robin Bromley, Geoff Manning and John Elliot (Crawley CMYC)

Enterprise:

Eric Bright and Simon Stewart (Crawley)

By Hannah Fagg (age 9) and Mark Fagg (age 40 something)