La Jument Lighthouse

The land is complicated. Life is simpler at sea. I have now been in Falmouth for 42 days – exactly as many as I spent going nowhere and back again.

It just seems longer.

The boat is loaded with food (another 49 cans of sardines). All I need to do is fill the water tanks (no longer leaking) and I am ready. The Shipping forecast offers northerly force 3-5, fair, good. Lying at anchor in Falmouth harbour I can see sails shaking out all around me as the locals revel in being allowed out at last.

I could go too. I could accept that the last spare part will just have to stay at the harbour office while I pass La Jument light off Ushant just in time to pick up the north easterlies across Biscay. It’s 1,300 miles to Lanzarote. Another 400 round the islands and then 875 to Porto.

Of course, I could stop – or maybe make a detour to Madeira. Last night I sat over the six o’clock beer working it all out and saying: “Sod it, let’s go!”

I could imagine the anchor breaking out and the bow swinging to the wind. The friendly couple on the 45ft cutter next to me waving goodbye – the children on the little beach, standing waist-deep in their shortie wetsuits and staring … the surge of the first swell off St Anthony’s Head. Would she carry the spinnaker?

Except that, this morning the wind is dying. The ensign has folded itself over the pushpit and I have missed my weather window.

The trouble is there’s absolutely no urgency. I have all the time in the world: 1,575 miles is 18 days at 90miles a day which is what I managed last time. I don’t have to be in Porto to meet the family for another 37 days. I other words, I have all the time in the world. It is an extraordinary thing to have the luxury of time. Why not revel in it?

I could make a fastening for the lid of the chart table so that it wouldn’t open if the boat turns over. I mean, how likely is that? But it’s easy enough to do and there’s some important stuff in the chart table. I could varnish the companionway – that needs doing three times a year.

But the fact is that I’m ready. Just to make sure, I went and propped the boat up against the little quay over on the Flushing side and spent a tide scrabbling around on the wet sand underneath scraping off pubescent goose barnacles and greasing the propeller, replacing the anode…

People came and interrupted me – a relief because there is nothing quite as unpleasant as scrubbing away above your head with a stinking pan scourer while green slime drips into your eye. The only upside is that you didn’t buy a bigger boat.

The new cooker is installed but I still haven’t put away the cigarette lighter (not quite believing I have electronic ignition). The new pipework doesn’t leak. The replacement mainsail is bent on and fits perfectly. The upgraded reefing system is ready to try in earnest. In fact, after 42 days, I can’t even remember all the entries in the “To Do” app which have been despatched with that self-satisfied click as“Done”.

But there is one thing that isn’t “Done”.

After all, those 42 days and 3,629 miles or whatever it was, just as we squeezed passed the Manacles and I went to let out some more headsail for the final close-reach into Falmouth, the furling gear jammed.

This is, of course, one of those ultimate nightmares. It’s right up there with sinking, dismasting, knock-downs, roll-overs and running out of beer. Many a boat has limped into port with a headsail fluttering in shreds because a fortnight ago someone didn’t keep the tension on the line and ended up with a riding turn, jamming the gear and leaving a fraught crew battling to make headway with the boat effectively in leg-irons.

I have a love-hate relationship with my furling gear. If I had my way it would be a Profurl or a Furlex – something that was simple and reliable and accessible.

Mine is a SeaFurl, made at about the time Noah was debating whether to give up hanked-on headsails. It is enclosed in a discreet stainless steel cowling which you have to unbolt (dropping the bolts) to get at the works.

And the works include a silly plastic disc which is supposed to stop the coiled line riding up into the top of cowling and jamming (which it wouldn’t if the cowling wasn’t there). Obviously, being plastic there is a possibility that this disc might get damaged somehow and need to be replaced. Also – obviously – you wouldn’t want to have to remove the entire assembly in order to do this.

So the designers came up with a brilliant idea: They would make the silly plastic disc in two halves which would clip together round the drum. The fact that this made the whole thing even more flimsy somehow escaped them.

It broke two years ago. Now it had broken again – and sure enough, the line grabbed the opportunity to jam itself once more. This time in the most inaccessible place, right against the back of the cowling. Beyond the reach, indeed, of someone lying on the foredeck with the big screwdriver and the occasional wave breaking over his head.

The obvious solution – taking the sail down – is never an option in this situation because it only arises when the sail is partly-furled. That means removing the sheets, leaving the sail flying in the wind and motoring round and round in circles until it furls by itself.

In such circumstances – the open sea with a stiff breeze – this is impossible. It would need the sort of engine people install when they don’t intend to put up sails in the first place.

It wasn’t until I was inside the harbour, in flat water, that I was able to execute this embarrassing manoeuvre (in full view, naturally, of all the amused blue-water sailors who gather in such a celebrated jumping-off point).

I got the sail off just as soon as the wind dropped, picked out the tiny pieces of the silly plastic disc and set about ordering another…from Tampa in Florida…in the middle of a global pandemic…

I suppose 42 days is not really so long. It was three weeks before I could get anybody on the phone – a harassed man on his first day back in the office looking at a list of emails that seemed to stretch around the world (many of them mine).

Then I became acquainted with the phenomenal efficiency of the US Postal Service tracking system. My consignment was in transit to the Next Facility. It had arrived at the Regional Facility and then progressed to another Facility … and another … before being Processed and arriving at its Origin Transfer Airport (Miami) and Departing (two days later).

I became obsessed, like a teenager on GroupMe. Hey, it had Departed Heathrow (had it arrived?) and was In Transit to Destination.

The Destination was the Harbour Office in Falmouth and therein lay another problem. The Harbour Office was locked down. That is to say, you had to ring the bell and someone would come clumping down the stairs to open the door and tell you not to come in. But they would agree to look in the cupboard and see if your parcel had arrived.

In the past, they had done just this – many times (Allen keys, mung beans, repaired autopilot…) Indeed, one of the Harbourmaster’s assistants made it quite plain that I was abusing the HM’s hospitality. I didn’t feel like calling after that – not until I was sure my Item had arrived.

And it did arrive – but in Coventry for Customs Clearance. Then, after another 48hours, Frabjous Day: “Your Item has arrived at the delivering Post Office.”

Isn’t that great? Nothing about having to pay duty on it, either – that’s what happened last time. I was getting to like pandemics.

But somehow my Item seemed to get stuck in the Delivering Post Office. I waited for the obligatory 48 hours for the final message “Your item has arrived at Destination” or even “We’ve decided you have to pay Duty on it after all” but the screen remained stubbornly blank.

I telephoned Falmouth Post Office. They were unimpressed with my US Postal Service tracking number. I called Parcel Force. Parcel Force is online.

In some desperation, after three days, I puttered across the harbour, slithered across the muddy seaweed (low tide, should have thought of that) and scrambled up the ladder to pay the Harbourmaster a call. Mr Grumpy was off duty. Instead, his charming colleague looked in the cupboard and said there was a letter for me. She brought it to the door. It was from Parcel Force: They would deliver my parcel just as soon as I paid the duty. The letter was three days old.

It is now scheduled for Delivery on Monday. It has its own UK tracking number.

I reckon I could be away by lunchtime. The wind is due to return at two o’clock.

They do say that one small, spur-of-the-moment decision can change your life.

The last 48 hours have been like nothing I have ever experienced before.

It all began very innocently: I was underneath the galley trying to stop the water pump squirting all over the ready-use stores when Jeremy Vine popped up on Radio Two to tell Ken Bruce he would be talking about “What we will miss when Lockdown ends.”

Well, of course, my lockdown was a bit different. As you now know, I skipped it entirely – or rather, I took the social distancing instructions seriously. Boris said: “Two metres”. I went for 3,629 miles.

I sent in my pennyworth to Radio Two. After all, my sister had suggested that particular instalment deserved a wider audience.

Years ago, it wouldn’t have been a problem. I had a column in Yachting World – and another in the Daily Telegraph. But now I’m old and past it. Most of my former colleagues are long gone – although old hacks never die. They just pontificate on Facebook.

I did send a couple of emails to the Guardian, although it wouldn’t surprise me if they lost them. Certainly, they never got back to me.

But Jeremy Vine not only read my email. He read it out on air to all his 7.42million listeners. I have it here: “I am over 70 and they were telling me that I would have to stay indoors for three months. Instead, I went sailing on my own. I thought I might get arrested if I went through the Dover Strait and so I went over the top of the Shetlands, down to the Azores in mid-Atlantic (didn’t stop) and then back to ask ‘Is it all over yet?’ It doesn’t seem to be and I had such a good time that as soon as a spare part arrives, I’ll be off again.”

It was a shame I missed it. I was on the phone at the time. Still, maybe there would be a flurry of listeners wanting to contact me saying: “Has he got a blog? Has he written a novel? Does he have a magical health supplement? Can I join his remote business and get paid to go sailing too?

Actually, no. I spent the afternoon with Woody Allen’s autobiography – and then sat up until two in the morning watching Love and Death on Prime.

So, I was still in bed idly marvelling at the news from the USA when the BBC rang: Would I do a ten-minute interview with Jeremy Vine?

Well, of course I would do an interview with Jeremy Vine. I felt sure I could find ten minutes at 1.30 (it doesn’t do to seem too keen).

No sooner did I press the “end call” button than I was out of the sleeping bag, making a list of points to cover and rehearsing my off-the-cuff rhetoric. Mustn’t forget to mention the blog. What would he ask? Just how far offshore is Rockall? Is it cheating to measure from the mainland? The Nutella joke is good… Remember the blog – write that down in big letters and keep it next to the phone…

So: An early lunch, charge the phone, ringtone to “silent” … not the best signal off Trefusis Point but we’re doing it on WhatsApp…

Of course, the rest – if not history – is certainly destined for my collection of favourite anecdotes. I was still talking when the messages started pinging in: “You’re on Radio Two!” (Yes, I know).

I remembered to mention the blog – in fact Jeremy repeated it at the end, bless him. The afternoon went by in a blur. Everybody rang up. Everybody had heard it – although when Tamsin gave her mother advance notice, Eira said: “But our Radio’s on Radio Four.”

– Well, change it, then.

“I don’t think we know how…”

Hits on the blog shot up to 5,000 – and counting…

The BBC got through to say “thank you” and how well they thought it had gone – and then rang back to say that a literary agent wanted to talk to me. Would it be all right to give him my number? (Please, can I pay you to give my number to a literary agent?)

This turns out to be Jeremy Vine’s literary agent – and Anton du Beke’s – and a whole lot of other people who I’m sure I would know if I paid more attention to popular culture.

Would I write a book? He was sure he could find a market for it. I had a novel too? Self-published on Amazon? Maybe he could find a home for that as well…

Of course, I mean yes – please… A proper publisher… and book tours… and chat shows and all that champagne and those little canapes with the caviar that falls off onto the carpet…

Ah, but wait: Maybe I should get back to him – just in case there was an email in my inbox with a million-dollar advance from Random House…

He sent me his CV.

I have spent this morning writing furiously to make up for lost time – except that I keep stopping every time the phone goes ping and somebody else wants the magic supplement. It’s just as well Facebook doesn’t ping – the part-time money people come in on Facebook because I need to check their profile pictures first (don’t ask). Also, Kindle Direct Publishing has to be refreshed every 20 seconds in case someone else has bought the novel.

Naturally, Random House let me down (and the galley pump is still leaking) but the blog is up to 55,000 hits. More than 300 information packs have gone out for the magic health supplement and I’ve raised the good-taste threshold for profile pictures before I agree to talk about the money thing.

Meanwhile, the agent has gone off to play the recording to all those proper publishers.

If you missed it, here it is:

What is it they use to make sardine cans? You’d think they were boxing up nuclear waste, the weight of metal in those things.

Admittedly, this is not something that had occurred to me until I read that the Golden Globe racers were committed to throwing nothing into the ocean unless it was fully biodegradable.

That was a couple of years ago. The real clincher was seeing a YouTube video of the bottom of a harbour in the Mediterranean. It looked like a rubbish tip – completely carpeted with cans and bottles and broken bits of this and that – anything that should have gone into a dockside bin if only anybody could be bothered to take it ashore and dispose of it properly.

To my shame, I had never thought of this before.

My earliest memory of being environmentally conscious was back in the 50s when my father would lean over the side of our Folkboat while holding the neck of an empty beer bottle in one hand and a hammer in the other. He kept the hammer stowed in the corner of the cockpit for just this purpose. The idea was to smash the end off the bottle and let go of the neck without cutting his hands, getting shards of glass on the deck – or dropping the hammer instead (which did happen). When winch handles became detachable he used those instead – with the same sorry result.

Life became easier when Inde Coope invented Long Life Pale Ale in cans: Instead of the hammer, you had a little device which pressed a triangular hole into the top of the can (and a second one on the other side to let the air in as the beer poured out).

The greatest advantage was that, when the can was empty, you could make a couple of holes in the bottom and just toss it over the side and watch it sink slowly into the wake. Father used to say it was a better method of gauging the speed than the Walker log – although he did keep losing the little hole-punch.

It never occurred to any of us that there was anything wrong with throwing beer cans over the side – or any rubbish, come to that. As long as it would sink or make food for the fishes, over the side it went.

There’s a lot about this in The Riddle of the Sands with the skipper, Davies, forever deep-sixing anything he considered surplus to requirements. Back in the 80’s I used to amuse myself in ocean calms by dropping used batteries over the side and watching them go tumble slowly down into the depths twinkling in the sunlight… deeper and deeper…

You wouldn’t do that now. It’s no better than fly-tipping – and I did wonder how on earth those Golden Globe competitors were going to store all their gash for six months (or 322 days in the case of the last man home). In fact, there was a simple answer: As they used the stores, more space would become available for the waste.

All the same, you wouldn’t want to mix the two in the same locker. That’s how, on my comparatively modest six-week Lockdown cruise, I found myself running out of space.

Potato peelings could go over the side of course – and apple cores and onion skins (at least the bits that didn’t blow back all over the deck). It was the plastic packaging and the empty cans that were going to be the problem.

Without knowing it, I had trained for just this moment: At home, I used to get into terrible trouble for being really boring and trying to reduce the family’s volume of waste by chopping up and compacting everything that went into the kitchen bin. In my defence, I was the one who had to get it all into the wheelie bin which, now, is collected only every two weeks.

I became an expert at stamping on empty cans and blunting the kitchen scissors by cutting up ketchup bottles. At one point I became so excited that I went to see a patent lawyer with a view to inventing a kitchen waste shredder – the garbage equivalent of the home-office paper shredder. I still think it’s a good idea but apparently, you can’t get a patent until you have a working prototype. My enthusiasm didn’t stretch that far.

Now, of course, well on the way down the Western Approaches and with nobody to tell me off, I started snipping mushroom cartons into pieces the size of postage stamps and perfected my chopped-tomato-can-flattening technique: Place the empty can on the cabin sole with the base against your right instep. Press down on the open end with your left foot. Do a little dance to shift your feet and use the right heel to fold down the base of the can until it lies on the flattened side – thus reducing the cylindrical can to a single-dimension rectangle in twoeasy steps.

This is all very well for chopped tomato cans – even for the small (and therefore more tricky) sweetcorn packaging. But what about sardines?

The sardine tin is a completely different – indeed devilish – shape. It is not tall enough to enable any leverage from the left foot. It won’t even stand on its side if the boat is moving about.

Of course, you could argue that a sardine can is so small as to be insignificant in the environmentally-conscious sailor’s scheme of things. But I was carrying 49 of them. This provided a certain urgency.

I tried bending in the sides with pliers – then mole grips. I made some progress with the portable vice clamped to the companion steps (but that took longer than lunch).

In the end, it was back to the 50s – to Father’s solution with the beer bottles: Time to get out the big hammer.

This now lives under the chart table and I have developed a system of gentle taps building to increasingly heavy blows in order to fold down the centre of each side: You have to be careful not to hit your fingers and the ridged base of the tin can dent even the most robust workbench (or in Samsara’s case, the chopping board).

With practice, it is possible to get the sides level with the bottom. Then, all that remains is brute force to bash the ends into two compliant points. The whole thing ends up as a sort of kite shape. It’s rather artistic. More importantly, you can get 49 of them into a single gash-bag.

Do rinse them first, though…

It was reading the Ocean Cruising Club’s Facebook page that made the decision for me.

On Friday, the Norwegian yacht Escape West posted: “We are in Curacao waiting for the morning light to go into our reserved space in the Spanish Waters. Then the coast guard call us and tell us Curacao is closed, we cannot enter their waters. Go away!

“We left St Martin Sunday evening and then Curacao was open and all we spoke to there said they have heard nothing of closing – so we left. Now we are here with myself, my wife and our five-year-old. Low on supplies and tired after the passage. Curacao authorities tell us to go but WHERE?

“We understand the virus threat and respect that but we cannot just go without knowing where and being prepared…”

That was posted on Friday. A few hours later, the club’s Port Officer for the Caribbean island reported the coastguard was prepared to use force to remove the boat from their waters.

Yesterday, after coverage in the local paper, the family were given 48 hours to buy provisions and prepare to leave – but where will they go?

All the sailing groups are alive with similar desperation: French Polynesia is “closed”, visiting boats told to leave Florida’s Key West, marinas in France and Spain in lockdown. Panama is still open but crews coming from the Caribbean are not allowed ashore.  Someone who had hauled out for maintenance and now can’t get back in the water described the trials of living high and dry on a small boat with three children under ten.

Meanwhile, I was in the Lowestoft Cruising Club’s visitor’s berth. I had set up base there for three months to do some work and save up for a new mainsail before setting off for Scotland and the Azores and finally Porto at the end of August where I was due to meet up with the family for a week in an AirB&B.

But how much of that is going to happen? Driving down to your boat is “non-essential travel”. If you haven’t yet launched after the winter, you can forget it for this year. In France they’re enforcing the curfew by refusing to open lock gates and bridges.

Hold on, there was a bridge between me and the sea: It opens ten times a day on request – but who was to say the harbourmaster would go on granting requests? Already there were reports that London was about to go into lockdown. Maybe he would take a leaf out of the French harbourmasters’ rulebook.

Besides, there was no point in continuing to stay in a marina if I wasn’t going to be allowed to visit potential customers – and if I had to self-isolate and work over the phone, where better to do it than anchored in some deserted cove? Followed by an exhilarating sail over a sparkling sea to the next deserted cove…

When you think about it, could there be any more effective way to isolate myself? The boat is low in the water with supplies (even toilet roll). I have water for 80 days (beer for 88). By the time I need to go ashore to re-supply, nobody will be able to argue that I haven’t been in quarantine.

I know it sounds anti-social but, honestly, this is all I ever wanted – to be on my own on my boat with no-one knowing precisely where I am. Sounds weird, I know, but by the time you get to 70, one of the great advantages is that you get to know what you like.

Personally, I think it’s going to be a great summer.

Buried in Gmail’s “updates” folder, among the Amazon orders (milk-frother, earbuds) and the daily inspirational quotes which never get read, was a message from Samsara’s insurance company: “All signs are pointing to storms on the North Sea and Baltic coasts. Meteorologists predict that hurricane-like gusts of up to 160 kilometres per hour are expected from Sunday at the latest.”

Apparently the reason for this was Storm Depression Sabine which was expected to become the most severe storm of the season and cause tidal surges and destruction willy-nilly. According to media reports clear parallels could be drawn with hurricane Xavier in 2013.

Boats and yachts in the water should, said the company, be laid in box berths  with additional lines and fenders available. On yachts with standing rigging, sails should be removed.

Then they wished me a pleasant weekend.

I was going to the pictures at the weekend. Really: For the past couple of weeks, every time I looked at Facebook or turned on the radio, people were raving about Sam Mendes’ masterpiece 1917 and I happen to have a fascination with the First World War. I called my 17-year-old, Hugo, the only one still at home. Yes, he would meet me at Ipswich station. We could have lunch and see the film in the afternoon – but it would have to be on Sunday. He had a paintball birthday party on Saturday.

By Thursday I was thinking that if it was very windy, I would have to deflate the dinghy to stop it blowing away, instead of just leaving it tied to the pontoon. And should I take the bike? I might get blown off it – or, worse, into oncoming traffic…

By Friday, it wasn’t just the insurance company talking about the weather. Now the radio weather forecasts were calling it Storm Ciara – and it was arriving on Sunday. The whole cinema expedition was out of the question. What if the dinghy flipped while I was in it? This was a good way to get drowned. I called Hugo and cancelled.

Next, how best to survive the storm? The insurance company would like the mast down – well, that wasn’t going to happen. They would like me in a “box berth” – secured by all four corners. I disagreed. Back in the great “hurricane” of 1987, Largo suffered quite a bit of damage from being in a marina. If it’s not crashing up against the pontoon, there’s the possibility of the pontoon itself coming adrift or another boat breaking free and causing mayhem.

No, give me a sheltered anchorage, preferably without any other boats and – best of all, surrounded by nice, soft mud. Oddly enough, that is a perfect description of Kirby Creek – and my anchor had been digging itself steady deeper into the mud for ten whole days.

I spent the Saturday making everything ready – putting a lashing round the mainsail (I didn’t need to take it off because I wasn’t going to have to worry about wind from the side. Samsara would be weathercocking around her anchor – which got another six metres of chain, increasing the scope from 3:1 to 4:1. Then I beefed up the chafe protection and added a hook on the chain for a mooring warp led to the sheet winch.

Really, the solar panel should come off but in doing so, there was a good chance I would drop some of the bits over the side. Instead, I lashed it down in all directions. After that, there wasn’t much to do but go to bed and wait.

Ciara was supposed to hit at 3.00 a.m. – the wind rising from 20knots to 40 in the space of an hour. The height of the storm with gusts of 63 knots (just under hurricane-force) were not due for another 12 hours. I woke on schedule to find the boat vibrating in the gusts but still in the same place. The creek under a full moon was a mass of tiny breaking crests.

Dawn showed them even smaller with the tide out – in fact it might have been pushed even further by the wind. The oddest sight was hundreds of small birds hunkered down head to wind on the mudflats. I went back to bed.

By ten O’clock people on Facebook were reporting the damage to their boats in the Solent. Somebody’s glass windscreen had been blown right off. I made an excursion on deck – mainly to check the chafe protection – one reinforced plastic hose inside another, both able to move independently. It was a pretty wild scene. I took out my phone and made a video for Facebook, clocking the windspeed indicator as it climbed down from 34knots.

As with everything else on Facebook, this revealed two separate (and entrenched) camps: “What does he think he’s doing out in this weather. As usual, it will be the RNLI who have to pick up the pieces…” and, from the other side: “If you can’t be on a boat at anchor in 32 knots of wind, then you need to acquire the skills…”

Oddly, nobody castigated me for failing to remove the headsail. I couldn’t see how it could unfurl and flog itself to pieces – not if I was there to keep an eye on things.

And so I spent the day looking out of the windows, listening to the news reports of floods and power cuts and disrupted travel (trampoline on the line). Once it seemed that everything was going to be all right in my small universe, I quite enjoyed the experience. The boat heeled to 15° in the gusts but since she wasn’t bucking to any waves, the gimballed cooker kept the coffee pot on an even keel.

It wasn’t until the late afternoon that it seemed to be all over. The tide went out again – even further than before so that it seemed we were surrounded on all sides by melted chocolate. Still, I could see what all the fuss was about – the barometer had dropped from 2018 to 988 in less than 24 hours.

So here’s the choice: Have a heart attack or lose the boathook.

Not much of a choice really. It was a new boathook.

There is a tradition that old sailors die on the foredeck – at least there was until someone invented the electric anchor windlass. If you saw my post on the subject last summer* then you’ll know where this story begins: For most of last year I was hauling up the anchor by hand.

Not this year, though. Now the windlass is fixed. I wrestled it off the boat, drove it up to Norfolk and, with £500 worth of new motor it’s not going to give any more trouble (it had better not).

And so, the day after Samsara went back in the water following our three month Christmas break, I dropped anchor in the River Deben at a place called Sea Reach just upstream from the moorings at Felixstowe Ferry. Apart from anything else, I wanted to try out the windlass.

Actually, I couldn’t wait to try out the windlass – so I convinced myself I wasn’t in quite the right spot and started winding it all back in again. The windlass whirred away, clinking in the chain, grunting a bit as the big Rocna broke out of the glutinous Deben mud.

Come to think of it, the windlass didn’t just grunt. It complained loudly. In fact, it faltered, sweating amps in all directions. Eventually, very slowly, the anchor emerged … with the most enormous ground chain hooked up in it. This was no mere 10mm riser. This had to be 16mm at least – and I couldn’t see the ends of it. Presumably, they trailed down on both sides the full five metres to the bottom. No wonder the poor windlass was struggling…

It was at this point that the new motor admitted defeat. When I pressed the button again to try and get the tangle within reach, all I got was a mutinous “click” that spoke of overload, smoking windings and £500 down the drain. Meanwhile, we drifted gently in the direction of the moorings – and beyond them, the Deben Bar … and the North Sea….

Mind you, we weren’t drifting very fast. Not with all that ironware dragging along the river bed after us.

That was how I came to reach for the boathook. The way I looked at it, all I had to do was lift the chain over the tip of the anchor. (If only the windlass had kept going for another half a second, it would all have been within reach and I could have got a rope on it, dropped the anchor out of the way and all this would have been rather dull.

Over the years, I have been given a great deal of advice on choosing boathooks (your own height in hickory with a solid brass fitting on the end – for sharpening, so you can skewer pirates…)

Call me a wimp, but I went for the flimsy telescopic variety so I could get it in the cockpit locker.

Actually, to give the new boathook its credit, it did succeed in lifting the chain – all 57kg of it. (I just looked that up: 16mm chain weighs 5.7kg a metre – but, of course, you have to double that because it was hanging down five metres on each side.)

The only problem was that now the entire 57kg was hooked onto the boathook … the plastic, telescopic boathook … which commenced its own protest; a sort of tortured screeching as it extended to its full length.

This was when I started making my own noise. If I let go, we would be free but I would lose the boathook. On the other hand, if only I could pull the chain up to deck level, I could shift my grip to the business end and then the whole thing would flip upside down and the chain would simply drop off.

Except that the boathook was now extended to its full 2.1m – which meant that the weight was increased by two to the power 5.7kgs per metre. In other words, more than an old man on the foredeck should be lifting if he wants to sail another day…

• If you missed last summer’s post: oldmansailing.com/the-farmer-the-bull-and-the-windlass

A Facebook friend kindly asks to hear about more adventures. How about this one…

I didn’t mean to be out in a Force 9.

That sounds like something out of Arthur Ransome.

But, honestly, in Blood Alley Lake round the back of Poole Harbour’s Brownsea Island, the forecast was for W 5-7 occasionally gale 8. All I had to do was get to Dover and clearly I was going to do it in double-quick time.

It was somewhere south of St Catherine’s Point with half the headsail poled out on one side and two reefs in the main on the other and everything strapped down tight, the log hovering between seven and eight knots, that Solent Coastguard came up with one of their deadpan Maritime Safety Announcements: “Dover, Wight: Westerly severe gale 9 imminent”.   Not “possibly” or “occasionally”, you notice. Not “later…”

This would have been all very well; after all, Brighton was a port of refuge. But already it was dark – the kind of dark October night that makes longshoremen shake their heads and stay in the pub – and the entrance to Brighton Marina is no place to be in pitch dark in a Force Nine.

Besides, I had a Rival and, although I am preaching to the converted here, a Rival knows what to do in a Force Nine. She sits down in the sea. She doesn’t leap about but picks her way through the unpleasantness. The only part of the process that is at all inelegant is the size of the bow-wave which would look better in front of a supertanker.

And all the while the Aries carves a series of elongated S-bends through the water, never quite gybing and never quite broaching but just going faster and faster, the harder it blows.

Which was how we ploughed on through the night. Midnight came and went, so did one and two O’clock in the morning. I debated hauling over the lee-board for my ten-minute kips but in fact all was calm and cosy in Samsara’s cabin – almost as if what was going on outside lived only in the met office imagination.

Actually, no: The wind built and so did the sea. By dawn the apparent wind was over 30 knots and I did once see 10.6 on the log as we surfed down a particularly steep wave. Exhilarating, certainly – I was only concerned about how sensible it was. The seas weren’t breaking yet but they were getting very big indeed. Also, it looked as though Samsara might dig her nose into the back of a wave and then I would have green water sluicing down the deck; but that buoyant Rival bow kept on rising. Still, it did occur that, in the open sea, this might be the time for heaving-to.

However, Eastbourne is not Nuku Hiva and suddenly the gap between Dungeness and the westbound shipping lane was beginning to look very narrow indeed. It was a case of gybing or getting the main down altogether. From choice, I would take the wind out of it first but somehow that didn’t seem like an option so, instead, I took a leaf out of the gaffer handbook and de-powered the sail.

Gaffers have a useful technique which goes by the wonderful name of “scandalising”. This involves dropping the peak halyard and lowering the gaff below the horizontal. On a Rival, you can get something like the same effect hauling on the topping so much that the boom sticks in the air like a cockerel’s tail-feather. This makes it possible to stand at the mast and claw down the sail without worrying about being thrown over the side. Now we could bring the wind onto the quarter and dispense with the spinnaker pole. We were still doing seven and eight knots through the water.

The book says to call Dover Port Control two miles off the entrance. I was fairly prompt about this – after all, we were covering a mile every six minutes and there was going to be no chance of “maintaining my position” if a ferry decided to come out.

Meanwhile, I pulled up the binoculars and inspected the entrance. Normally this is a pointless exercise. You can sit at anchor in a stiff onshore breeze and see no sign of breakers on the beach – but try and land in a dinghy and you’ll soon find them.

Looking at the Western Entrance in close-up, the word “maelstrom” came to mind. The gap seemed very small indeed and appeared to be filled entirely with white water.

The tide was racing past so I was going to have to go in sideways which meant heading up into what was now, without any doubt at all, a really “severe gale” even though it might not feel like one with the speed we were doing. If I turned into it with any sail at all, Samsara  would go over on her ear and, in breaking water, this might not be good.

Even with a bare pole, would the engine inlet stay submerged long enough to sustain full revs? We were going to need full revs on the little feathering prop too make headway in this.

Look on the bright side. It was quite exciting…

I don’t think I’d ever experienced anything quite like it. Did I say a Rival sits down in the sea? Forget that. In Dover harbour entrance with an onshore Force 9, they get thrown about like a bath toy with a two-year-old who doesn’t want to get out.

To give you an idea of what was going on, the companionway padlock, a great lump of metal which sits in the corner of the cockpit unless I remember to put it away, jumped clean over the side in disgust.

But the engine – worshipful Nanni – kept thundering on and gradually we clawed our way past the end of the northern mole and into what passed for calmer water.

The harbour launch ranged up alongside – rather close, it seemed to me as I clambered about organising warps and fenders. Maybe he had been ready for a rescue.

Just to show what happens when you think it’s all over, I missed the cleat coming into the pontoon and demolished the electricity pedestal. Later, over a calming cup of coffee, I pulled out my phone – something I needed to check…

Once I’d got the main down as we came up to Dungeness, I had been astonished at how much calmer everything seemed with just the jib – and yet the log still showed a very respectable 6-7 knots. So how fast had we been going with the main as well?

Navionics has a “Maximum Speed” function if you know where to find it. Of course, it doesn’t account for the tide which had been running at nearly three knots nor the fact that satellite positions sometimes need to catch up with themselves.

Even so, the maximum speed on that memorable overnight passage from Poole to Dover had been 15.1kts.

It’s a record I’m not sure I want to break.