Picture the scene. we’re moored just inside the left arm of a ‘Y’ in the river pointing towards the lock, within hearing distance of the weir which is doing its thing down the right arm. There are a few boats moored around with a fairly leisurely Sunday feeling in the air. Despite having all the necessities for cooking breakfast on board we’ve just come back from a cooked breakfast in the tearoom across the tow path.

The plan is to reverse out of the ‘Y’, spin around without disturbing the boats around us and head off back up the river to Stoke Lock. Seems very straightforward in theory but I reckoned without the current from the weir, & the wind. I now know what the term ‘sailing close to the wind’ actually means; the moment we presented the broad side to the river flow we started to move in exactly the direction we didn’t want to and were getting closer to the weir. This came as an unpleasant surprise, despite being in complete alignment with the laws of physics. For a moment or two we genuinely thought we were going to crash, and Debs’ mothering instincts cut in as she ran to the girls who were completely oblivious the the drama on deck while they concentrated on their respective Nintendo DSs. Bizarrely my thoughts were more around how stupid I’d look if I ended up on the protective buoys & had to be towed off.

As it happened we ended up facing the weir while I floored it in reverse; as soon as we were moving in the right direction I started to feel a little more under control. Even if I had to reverse all the way home the immediate danger was removed. When it felt safe to try the turn again we did, and although we again started to head towards the weir we had plenty of space to get all the way around and begin to travel home forwards. Looking of course as if we’d planned the whole maneuvre.

However adrenalin was making the paranoia hormones work overtime; suddenly everything started to sound ‘wrong’, the engine was lumpy, the deck was rattly & there was a general feeling that things were about to go awry. We moored up at a private power boat club pontoon and put the kettle on while we centred ourselves, and after a member made it fairly clear that we’d be unpopular if we were still there in about an hour when the rest of the membership turned up we enlisted their help to get away from the mooring against the wind and started off again with little incident.

Phew.

I signed the Official Secrets Act today. I don’t feel like a hippy any more.