Having read Margaret and Frank Dye's books with enthusiasm and bought a Wanderer a couple of years ago, which included in its inventory a boom tent I decided that during my summer annual leave I had better try it out, with my intrepid pressed crew (now 5).

Armed with a decent forecast for Saturday [Aug 7th 2004] and F3 to F4 Southerly until Sunday pm when F5 with thunder storms were promised, Niamh and I launched Joshua from the RNLI depot slip at Holes Bay Poole on Saturday afternoon, the initial plan to catch the 14:30 bridge into the the harbour proper having fallen foul of my leaving the entire food stock in the fridge at home, meaning an hour round trip back home before we were ready to go.

Leaving the car keys with the RNLI security staff we buzzed across Holes Bay with the Mariner 2.5 doing its stuff after a long lay off since it was de-winterised in April. 10 minutes stooging around avoiding Sunseekers circling north of the Town Quay bridge saw us released into the harbour, the Mariner fizzing away on the back to try and keep pace with the queue of motor cruisers burbling past Town Quay.

Passing the seemingly enormous dredgers tied up alongside the port area we parted company with our line of Holes Bay escapees, most of whom seemed to be heading for an afternoon in the sun just outside the mouth of the Harbour at Studland Beach. They planed off across the harbour to the South East, while we turned to starboard and pointed to the West, passing the Ro Ro ramps for cross channel ferries.

Once well clear of the chop around the quay I stopped the outboard and hoisted sail, something I have yet to master with any style when underway. All my early formative sailing in dinghies was done from ashore or from swinging moorings - where sail was set carefully under controlled conditions and remained set until a beach was hit for lunch or we returned home at the end of the day. I find that I feel exposed making sail "underway", with other boats in attendance and the dinghy rolling and shearing about completely out of control.

The boat always feels crowded with the boom and mainsail stowed across the thwart so this time I had flaked the sail onto the boom held in place with bungee ties, the boom held horizontal on the goose neck using the kicker and a topping lift improvised from the main halyard. I still had to drop the boom into the boat before hoisting however to recover the halyard and to insert the bulky masthead buoyancy into its pocket at the top of the mainsail. This probably only took a minute, but I never the less felt I was getting in the way of other boats and probably appearing to be incompetent mucking about in the middle of the harbour so evidently out of control. I had tied a reef down before we launched as I always choose to with just me and the young crew aboard, so we set off eastward on a dead run towards Moriconium Quay and the Marines base at a gentle drift in glorious weather. 5 minutes later I decided that a little more speed would be appropriate in the near calm conditions so spent a further minute or so drifting about "all a flap" whilst I shook out the reef, feeling again that eyes were on me drifting about putting sails up and down and getting in people's way. This auror of incompetence was not any further dispelled when I noticed that the bolt rope from the reefed section of the main had not been drawn up the mast track correctly which meant I again had to stop and drop the main to get it hoisted correctly before the rest of the bolt rope pulled out.

Finally we cleared the high speed ferry berth, just as Condor was starting up with impressive thunderous sound effects plus smoke, and resumed our course towards the eastern extremities of the harbour.

The plan had originally been to spend the afternoon at Shipstal Point with which we are familiar having visited last year on the WCOA Poole Harbour cruise, however the mishap with food being left at home meant that we were behind schedule and duly pushed straight on for our second objective, the River Frome and Wareham town quay where I planned to find somewhere out of the way to moor up for the night before returning early in the morning voiding the thunder and high winds forecast on the Sunday afternoon.

Running through the moorings off Moriconium Quay things settled down, the crew had a go at steering with a little more success that on previous attempts and we got out the nibbles and drinks. Drifting across the wake boarders playground in the Wareham Channel to the south of Rockley Point I tried out my clockwork radio and the crew and I took up very comfortable positions sat on the bottom boards either side of the tiller basking in the sun whilst radio four burbled away pleasantly in the back ground.

At the eastern end of Wareham Channel the passage around Giggers island and up the river Frome becomes somewhat tortuous, twisting every which way and being very narrow between the withies difficult to beat against a head wind. I experimented with running the engine to maintain steering way in the narrow channel whilst dropping the main (in an untidy heap in the cockpit) which appeared no less amateurish than drifting about aimlessly as I didn't have enough hands to steer, release the halyard, collect the sail and stow the boom. A few anxious minutes and a very wiggly wake later had things under control and we began the rather wonderful passage up the Frome to Wareham town quay.

The river is bordered on both banks by reed beds with a motley collection of vessels moored along its banks. A series of tight turns and occasional glimpses of Wareham Church above the reeds keep you guessing about how far you have to run, passing a boat yard to port, the Redcliffe sailing club and campsite with slipway and powerboats milling around in the queue to recover ashore. Traffic on the river is quite frequent but during both this and my earlier sighter trip I have found the other skippers to be courteous and considerate keeping to the 4 knot limit and making their intentions clear in plenty of time.

Approaching the town quay I kept my eyes peeled for an appropriate spot to tie up for the night, seeing several inviting landing stages or private "holes" in the reeds on either bank. Wanting to be as close to the town as possible for toilets etc I pushed on past and on the last reach before the town bridge spotted a couple of scaffold poles set into the bank amongst the reeds with a landing stage fashioned from old pallets giving access to the river bank hidden some 10 feet back through the reeds. A quick check with the couple on a nearby yacht confirmed that the space was not currently in use and that it would not dry over night. We circled around, judged our way against the last of the flood completely wrongly before cutting the engine and hurriedly fetched out a paddle to splash our way to the bank with less dignity than was planned.

Raising the boom tent afloat was more challenging than the dry run on the drive the previous week, as I was now working "inside out" as it were, not being able to walk around the boat and heave things into place, instead piggling about from the inside, groping for ropes and fumbling with Velcro straps. 45 minutes later we had a reasonably weather proof shelter in place, the beds rigged and dinner on the go, sausages fried up in a saucepan with beans and sweetcorn thrown in at the last minute. Easy, hot, smelt divine and pleased the crew no end. Three chapters of Mrs Pepperpot, a cup of milk and the washing up before it got dark followed by a hurried trip along the gloomy "tow path" into town in search of somewhere to empty our bucket "convenience" (unsuccessful as they were locked up at 7:00) saw us turn in by 9:30, chat away excitedly 'til 10:00 and then the crew began to snore contentedly.

As the adult in charge I felt rather less relaxed and unable to sleep soundly. Occasional traffic passed until the small hours, causing us to bounce around a bit, and the tide fell away at some rate an hour or so after high, meaning frequent groping about outside to reset the mooring lines which refused to run as easily as I hoped down the scaffold poles, creaking alarmingly and often causing us to heel away from the bank until the lines were pushed down past the muddy reeds to a new position. Later in the early morning the rising tide was similarly troublesome, with several trips to the tent flap to grope around up to my elbows in the Frome drawing the loops up to the surface and restoring our trim to somewhere near horizontal. Next time I intend to rig longer "springs" crossing amidships rather than the simple short bow and stern lines I employed this time, which would allow more scope for the rise and fall of the tide.

Apart from attending the mooring lines I also developed a bit of fixation with checking the bilges and aft buoyancy tank. Having not had the boat afloat for more than a few hours at a stretch previously, and being heavily loaded with gear so that many fittings usually above the water line were well below, I checked under the floorboards and in the aft tank about five times during the night, each time happy to find them dry but never satisfied that they would stay that way 'til morning.

Bleary eyed we came to at about 6:00 the following morning, a little stiff from the cramped space below the thwart and bruised by the grip strips screwed to the floorboards under my shoulders. Breakfast of Shreddies and coffee was followed by an hour sorting out the chaos that was the cockpit, with bedding stuffed back in the aft tank, tent stowed under the foredeck and motor mounted back on the transom.

The forecast for stronger winds in the afternoon seemed to have been rather hopeful as the halyards were ringing vigorously against the mast as we motored away downstream by about 8:45. I had taken the precaution of refuelling before we got underway in case conditions were too lively to beat against once we got back out into the harbour.

Emerging from the river into Wareham Channel the fresh 4 / 5 wind over tide was kicking up a wet chop right on the nose which forced us to reduce speed and don the waterproofs, Niamh taking up her favourite sheltered station tucked up against the wanderer-box beside the centreboard, protected from the flying spray by the foredeck.

Put off by yesterday's antics raising and lowering sails afloat I elected to motor straight into the teeth of the wind all the way back to Poole Town Quay. It was getting steadily worse both in wind strength and sea conditions all the time and I didn't fancy a prolonged and lairy thrash to windward in my tired and somewhat bruised state with the risk of Niamh getting cold or worse capsizing a heavily loaded boat.

This plan worked fine until we were bouncing through the moorings off Moriconium Quay when we ran out of fuel. Charging around the boat I got us refuelled and back under way very rapidly but we were lucky not to drift onto a moored boat in the mean time. Wet through and somewhat relieved to turn the corner we motored up past Poole town quay with 20 minutes to spare before the 10:30 bridge back into Holes Bay.

We tied up to the Harbour tug just below the bridge to await the lift and spent the 20 minutes de rigging as far as we could afloat to speed up things ashore later.

Once again the passage through the bridge was a procession of thumping motorboats with one diminutive Wanderer trying to keep up and out of everyone's way. A short passage past the new RNLI training college saw us back at the depot slipway where 60 minutes of heaping wet stuff straight into the back of the car had us ready to motor back home. Niamh fell fast asleep on the floor almost as soon as we got home and I soaked in the bath for an hour.

In summary it was a decent first go at camping. Wareham was lovely, peaceful and picturesque. the crew declared she had a good time and wants to do it again. I need thicker camping mats, longer mooring lines and practise at raising and lowering the mainsail underway. The little butane stove we picked up in Argos was great, stable on the aft buoyancy tank with loads of heat output. With hindsight I should have waited for a better forecast for the second day, but as it was I think the decision to motor against it was the right one, however I should have sought a lea in Wareham Channel to refuel under more relaxed circumstances before entering the moorings.

Tim Robertson W1038 August 10th 2004