Nick Burnham: I figured our best hope for a sheltered spot was tight-in under the cliffs at Hallsands but even there, the wind was gusting hard
Thedire. Strong winds and heavy rain were blowing in early Saturday, which was particularly frustrating as positively Mediterranean – calm, sunny and forecast for the weekend was the preceding week’s weather had been with temperatures nudging 30 degrees. I’d spent most of it in Southampton filming for Aquaholic. Very productive, but miles away from my own boat.
It was a disappointing outlook for the weekend, particularly for Marianne, who has taken to boating with a zeal that makes me look almost disinterested. “When is the bad weather coming?”, she demanded. Upon hearing that Saturday morning was the big change, she hatched a plan: “You put us some dinner together, I’ll get away from work as early as I can and we’ll go boating Friday evening.” We were on!
I put together what I euphemistically refer to as a ‘salad’. There is, to be brutally honest, nothing very green and salad-ish in it. It’s normally baked potatoes, sliced ham, grated cheddar, tuna and boiled eggs. The reason it’s officially a salad is that it gets salad cream on it, everything else gets tomato ketchup. I swapped baby new potatoes for the baked ones as they would be fine eaten cold, added some small tomatoes and some lettuce leaves for Marianne to make it a little more realistic and motored down to Noss On Dart to get the boat ready for our re-scheduled trip.
By 5:30pm we were heading down the River Dart. Marianne was keen to put some sea and speed beneath the keel, and the wind, whilst already strong, was offshore so although the surface was white capped, it was reasonably flat. We cruised west at 20 knots, past Blackpool Sands and Slapton. I figured our best hope
