Nick Burnham: I cranked up the live version of Sammy Davis Junior’s fabulous ‘Mr. Bojangles’ on the stereo – another joyous memory to cherish
Easterliesare the bane of Torbay boating. With the Brixham-based South West Sports Boat Rally (sponsored this year by Aquaholic!) looming, forecasts were being scanned in earnest, and of course the joy of the internet is that if you don’t like one forecast, you can generally find another.
Unfortunately this time all seemed to be in agreement, easterlies were coming. The only question was what wind strength and when? Force 2 is not a problem. Force 4 is. The Met Office was predicting wind strengths of Force 2 to 4, and building.
The good news was that the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee gave us an extra day, so Marianne and I headed round on Thursday afternoon to join 20 or so other boats on the Events Pontoon.
Sometimes the simple pleasures are the best, and a riotously hilarious fish ’n’ chips on board with good friends Greg, Sally, Sue and Matt was hugely enjoyed.
A night aboard – the first this year – and we were good to go for the first of the events on Friday morning: a picture quiz devised by Sue and Matt, for which we were all given a series of locations around Torbay and a sheet of images, some of them dummies.
Our task was to match the images to the locations, and Sue and Matt are devious quizzers! Much fun was had roaring around the bay, scouring the locations and matching them to photos. We got most of them and made it back to Brixham a couple of hours later. Lunch aboard, an afternoon siesta and we were ready for the second part of the fun.
With evening tides, the plan was a run down the coast to the River Dart and then a trip right up to the furthest navigab
