When the Tree Fell to Pieces

Dover is the Kentish transit town. Hundreds of thousands visit every year but few of them remain here more than a few hours.  Many of them pass through fatigued at the wheel of immense trucks. Others less legal, huddle hopefully in the trailer behind a wall of boxes filled with cut-price lawnmowers and cheap Sodastream knock-offs.

Hunkered down unwashed in the bilges of GB-SUE we may look like scruffy victims of the Snake-Head gangs, but in fact we are simply riding out a windy day.  Unwilling to leave the sanctuary of our berth we keep our mooring lines tightly wrapped round secure points and our fenders soaking up the blow.  The winds, which on occasion hit 35kts, are despatching clouds swiftly over the southern horizon and releasing harmonics from the standing rigging.  The low tones add a note of menace to what inland is barely noticed as a breezy day. 

It is apparent that today will be the day we deep clean the boat inside and out. 

In order to undertake a clean of this depth and intensity we require specialist tools and so we need a visit to the nearby chandlers to secure supplies.  Sharp & Enright have had a shop in Dover since 1865 and with the exception of a government-issue No Smoking sign, the door remains today a portal to the Victorian times in which the business was established. 

On entry, a polite older store-keeper will approach wearing a blue shop coat and soliciting your advice on how he may assist.  

"Do you have any rubber gloves?” you ask, and he will dive into depths of the building that the window light cannot penetrate and minutes later resurface carrying a selection of gloves in each hand. They are all of different colours and each colour identifies a resistance to alternative corrosive substances that you may on occasion wish to dip your fingers into.

“Do you mean like these Sir?” he enquires in the manner of an Edwardian Valet.

On receiving the news that you are also in the market for six shackles of assorted sizes he leads you to a wall lined with rows and columns of plastic containers. He pauses for a moment with his hand fluttering in the air like a hawk considering the topography – and then opens exactly the right box and supplies the goods.  He arranges them on the same wooden worktop that Sharp & Enright ordered new back in 1865, and on learning that you will take them all, adds up the price using a stub of pencil and a torn scrap of paper provided for the purpose.

Outside on the street a middle-aged couple with matching haircuts are checking their purchases.  They have methylated spirit, brushes and varnish.

 “It would have been quicker and cheaper in Asda”  the man remarks, and with those few words he puts his finger on  the change in retail habits that may eventually consign this wonderfully archaic shop to no more than someone’s memories  and two or three preserved photos in the closest local library. 

We walked back to the boat carrying our purchases, wondering if the wind would calm down and talking about who would run the store when the Old Boys decided to throw in the towel. As we walked down the ramp headed for the boat our view opened out and this is what we saw across the marina from us:

In this photo the wind is coming from behind the viewer and into the picture.  It is blowing with such intensity that it has taken on the job of pinning the 12 meter, 13 tonne Swedish ultra-yacht up against the sterns of the three motor boats moored on the opposite side.

Were it not for the agile fendering work being undertaken by two of the crew, the noise of grinding metal and plastic would have represented the most expensive sound any of us were likely to hear this month.

Whilst the wind continued to blow as it had been blowing for the last 48 hours, the skipper of the Lobster and Chips, (not her real name) was left without options.  He couldn’t go forwards and he couldn’t back up. He was unable to free her from the tangle of davits and mooring lines that held her tightly like an anaconda embracing a fawn.

The situation offered no obvious solution to the three or four of us stood around gazing in morbid fascination at the hideous scene.  We each knew that it could as easily have been us arriving in the face of a near-gale, and some of us offered silent thanks that our boats were tied up secure and pointing into wind.

Luckily for Lobster and Chips there was one person on the pontoon who knew what to do – a German named Ronnay who sized up the situation and asked his wife to search out their Man-Overboard retrieval system.  This consisted of 100 meters of thin floating line with a weighted sling attached to one end.  The idea was to throw the sling across the water to the crew of the L & C and then bend on a heavy gauge line and use the first line to pull the second across. 

Unfortunately for the entangled yacht, Ronnay’s Man Overboard retrieval system had been sitting at the bottom of his cockpit locker for ten years, and since neither Ronnay nor his wife had been unlucky enough to inadvertently exit their boat in a manner requiring use of the device, it had spent the decade getting more and more tangled.  What came out of the hold was a large ball of rope with a sling connected.  After a few seconds trying to unpick ten years of chaos he just grabbed the whole bundle and threw it into the marina relying on the wind to carry it southwards as it taunted the struggling boat.  For once the wind obliged.

After a couple of attempts the crew managed to get a boat hook on the line and within a few minutes they held one end of a 50 meter mooring line with the other paid out across the water to our side.  They tied it on to their stricken boat.

“No, no, no!” shouted Ronnay,  “This is your boat – you must do the pulling!” and he bent down and tied his end in turn, to the pontoon.

The crew got the message and quickly untied their end, ran it through a block and loaded it onto their heaviest winch. 

From this point forward it was now a question of mechanical force over the wind.  They cranked ten meters of line in, and we could see that Ronnay’s ingenious plan was working.   A lot more winching and five minutes later they were safely tied up in the next berth to us, smiling relieved smiles and hunting down hull cleaner to erase the scuff marks from their topsides.

“Bit windy out there…” remarked the Dutch skipper with English understatement and he handed a bottle of decent French red to his German rescuer. 

For a moment standing there in Dover I felt dislocated - like a visitor to my own shores. I was embedded with a group of people who loved Britain more than I do and travelled here to see sights that casual familiarity had hidden from me.  It occurred to me that Spanner and I, the crew of GB-SUE, were now part of that different community.  We were members of a local flotilla of amateur sailors hanging out in the pretty bits of seaside towns waiting. We also cleaned and mended, but mostly we waited; for the wind to blow at the right time at the right strength and in the right direction.

I picked up my broom clambered back aboard and started scrubbing.  As I leant to the handle looking for the all the world as though I was born with an honest work ethic and a brush in my hand, I felt a connection with our boat, the weather, and the simple nature of our current situation.  I turned and looked at the other yachts in the dock waiting with us and nodding in the breeze, and as I did the sky lightened, the sun came out - and I was sure I felt the wind begin to ease.