Boys Wayfarer Weekend in Norfolk

As with all good weekends away we left at Friday lunch time, Alasdair Coghill, Nikki Theokritof, Dave Barker and me, together with Dave's Wayfarer Cockles. With Dave at the wheel we made excellent progress and arrived in Brancaster by 4pm and had Cockles rigged and ready for action shortly after 5pm.

We then retired to the Jolly Sailor to meet our leaders (Simon and Rachel McEvoy), senior wayfaring folk (John Mellor, Allan Parry and Matt Sharman) and fellow Notts County travellers - Phil North, Doug Wensly, Andy Godfrey, Charles Ferrar, Sam Samuels and Alison Goodall. A splendid meal was had by all. The haddock and chips looked outstanding but having robusted my metabolism with an excellent sausage egg and chips at the Barge Inn on route I made do with the smoke fish gumbo which was superb. No team members left hungry.

Back at the bunk house the drinking began in earnest, along with games of spoons. Allan and Andy gave a resilient demonstration of whiskey tasting before bed. The night was memorable for the volume of snoring coming from the six heavyweights in the Sea room and the arrival from Sicily of Steve and Viv Payne at 3am in the morning just in time to join Allan and Andrew in their quest to identify the best whisky.

The alarm went off at 5.20am and after brief breakfast and some more detailed resuscitation of team whisky we headed for the boats. As the sun rose we head off in a good 6 gusting 7. Matt confidently led the way ably supported by Sam but with 10 minutes his mast was broken! Rumour has it that this event was preceded by a brief capsize - but no footage of this incident is available and so YouTube has been spared the upload. General discussion later was centred on whether this could truly be called a capsize, given that the depth of water was less than 6 inches!

The fleet watched while John Mellor gave a demonstration of fine seamanship in a blow to get a rope to Matt. Despite John's efforts however the combination of wind and tide took Matt and Sam to a lee shore where they were eventually towed to safety by a helpful fisherman. The rest of us then reached up and down gleefully and enjoyed planning conditions - before beating back skilfully to the beach.

After a brief lunch Steve led a party of people to the RSPB sanctuary whilst Simon led a party to the pub. Steve took great care in guiding the group through the sanctuary. Those of us in the remedial group were shown marsh harriers, a little egret, curlew, woodcock and some shovellers. The more advanced group moved on to the variation in iris colour and knee hair of different types of ducks whilst those of us in the remedial group headed for a coffee. Many thanks to Steve for this insight into a new world.

Matt spent the afternoon trying to find a spare mast and we are grateful to xxx for letting us borrow his. After a brief power nap a massive Chinese takeaway was consumed and more cards played and many songs sung. Thanks for Liz for the quiz and Steve for the music.

Sunday morning saw another early start and a glorious morning as we headed out to sea in a force 6 with the sun rising. Beating past the sand bar against the tide required precise team work but eventually we all made it out to sea and after some exhilarating training runs we retired to the beach for Oxtail soup. Matt then borrowed Charles's new Hartly and set the speed record for the weekend at cc Knots. Those of us new to the Wayfarer community were not sure whether this was a good thing or not - and so we did our best to calm the old hands by saying how nice the wooden boats looked. Charles walked around clearly proud of his new offspring, but to his credit did not challenge others to a race. We then returned to the beach - which involved some vigorous beating and packed the boats away with a glass of bucks fizz supplied by Simon.

Big Breakfast in the Deepdale café rounded off the weekend perfectly and we headed of for home in the afternoon. The highlights of the weekend for me were the surprising speed and stability of the Wayfarer at sea, despite the high winds, and sailing out to sea at 7am as the sun came up behind us.

On behalf of all of the people at the weekend I would like to thank Simon and Rachel for arranging the weekend so carefully and well, and also Matt and John for sharing their time and Wayfarers with the group. Thanks also to everyone who brought their boats down. The weekend certainly opened my eyes to a new dimension for sailing.