Out of Lockdown 6

 

The inshore lifeboat leaves harbour in a welter of spray.

Overnight the wind has risen, from the north. Wind battles tide, throwing up steep breaking seas.

A yacht, beating up from the south, cannot negotiate the ("L" shaped) harbour mouth, without her engine. (the narrow final section is dead to windward). And the engine will not start. A tow from the RNLI saves the day.

The Royal Temple Yacht Club Sunday race fleet has already put to sea. Departing the pontoons with bravura and elan.

Still the breeze builds. Marbling the steely grey seas with foaming manes of white, wind driven, spray.

The racers surf downwind. Sun glinting off drum tight spinnakers. Crews well aft. Keeping the bow up, manning spinnaker guys, the vang, the running backstays, the sheets. Steering as deep as they dare. Balancing an unintended gybe, to leeward, against a broach, to windward, in the quartering swell.

They are close inshore now. The water shoaling fast. Seas building. They must gybe. Forward goes the bowman (to handle the spinnaker pole). 

Waves rake the deck. The bow digs in. The stern slews to leeward. The helmsman wrestles her back on course. Into the turn, that will carry her stern through the eye of the wind, into her gybe.

Stargazer sits patiently in the calm of the harbour, hood up and snug in the sunshine. Waiting for her slant. The wind is forecast to drop tomorrow and veer easterly on Tuesday. Which would give us a reach up to the Suffolk rivers.