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Do You Have A Tender Behind?


Wussername

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Polly - Dogs as in plural - My boy is staying with us while he renovates his latest house purchase, as a result we have 'Lexie' with us, a Cairn Terrier, or the Tasmanian devil as I refer to her.

Yorkshireman and sheep?  somebody is  confused here, it's Tykes n whippets (And flat caps)  the sheep are the domain and firmly utilised by the Welsh of course.

Griff

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Herbert Woods yard circa 73/74 which would have put me at 13 or 14.

It’s about 1000 and blowing a hooley.  Intended stop for lunchtime was to be Malthouse Broad.  So me and my mate (Same age-ish) decided on an adventure.  Life jackets on, boogie box at the ready, 1 x bottle of cider to share between.  Dinghy rigged up for sailing.  The plan was for us to set off in the dinghy and make for Malthouse Broad.  Dad / family etc would follow on with the Admiral (Forget which number) and pick us up as/when/if they caught us up.

We were full of ourselves and well up for it.  We set off from the mother ship at a cracking rate, the wind instantly taking hold of our full dinghy sail – No reefs set either, they are for Southern softies not for the likes of us ruffy tuffy Northern Lads.  Then it suddenly smacked me right square on the napper, I’d forgotten the foot bridge between us and the river!  :shocked   :facepalm:    We tried to come about but by pure bad luck there was a boat manoeuvring so we couldn’t, not enough room or time to come about t’other way either and besides we were now approaching the bridge nearly on the plane, would the lug sail top spar clear the bridge?

Did it eckers like, it caught about the top two feet of it.  Due to the strength of the wind in the full sail, there was no way our dinghy was stopping, bridge or no bridge.  The effect on the dinghy can only be described as ‘Pulling a Wheely’ the dinghy stood on it’s transom but kept going forward. This tumbled both of us to the stern of our dinghy, I looked up at the lug spar scraping fast along the under side of the bridge, we were going to make it.  Er,  no we weren’t    ‘SNAP’    the spar broke in half, the dinghies bow came into contact with the oggin once more and we shot across the river in a mass of tangled arms / legs with half the sail over us completely blinding us to the direction or control of our travel, Did I say control? That was an error. We rammed the opposite bank square on, fortunately missing any moored craft. This shot us forward adding to the already considerable amount of bruises we had just so recently acquired.

Not the best start to a day on the river I have ever had I must say.

We sorted oursens out and rowed back to our Admiral.  Dad had of course witnessed the whole event.  He was trying to look angry due to the damaged spar but failed easily, tooooo funny by far he proclaimed.  An hour later both me and my mate were very much lighter in the pocket money department as Dad went and purchased a replacement spar from H.W’s (Later on in the week, he reimbursed us as H.W’s refused to take payment for the new spar)

We resumed our journey in said dinghy feeling somewhat subdued.  This time however we rowed outside of H.W’s yard to the river before hoisting a somewhat reefed sail and we were off.  The rest of the journey to Malthouse was without any sort of incident that I remember other than it was exhilarating with the strength of the wind on offer. We made it to Ranworth Dam before the Admiral caught us up, Dad insisting that someone had given us a tow to get us so far so fast, we hadn’t of course.

 

Griff

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Sorry for thread drift but we've taken on a rescue dog, according to his DNA test is about 75% Cairn Terrier and the rest is a mix of Biewer and Yorkshire Terrier.  Tasmanian Devil is a good description, only thing he is scared of is our 2 cats who left him in no doubt as to who's in charge !

Back on topic we always had a tender so we could go exploring some of the backwaters.  I can remember getting lost in Surlingham broad with the tide going out and not much water under the dinghy!

 

Oppy_2.JPG

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Oh how very cute is he! How on earth can anyone hurt them or abandon them. He's in good hands now, well done Neil :clap

Grace

p,s What's his name? He looks like a cheeky Charlie to me, a bit like our very own little scamp on the forum :naughty:

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