Snowy weather in the winter!

I take so long to write these blogs that they are nearly always a bit less than topical - apologies for that!  I started this at the beginning of this week when arguments were raging  about the weather!  Apparently it has been the coldest day of the year so far.  Great, get rid of some of the germs.  I am old enough to remember going to school in 1963 when we were "snowed in" for 3 months.  My school was never closed, sadly!  

The River Brue at high tide

But life on board Britannia when the boys were little was sometimes chilly.   I remember the winter of 1975/76 when we had a berth on the River Brue in Highbridge in Somerset.  We were sitting on a mud berth in the river, the tide flowing in from the Bristol Channel with a rise and fall of 40 feet, the second highest in the world.  We moored up against a very long wooden jetty, crossing the mud flats which was about twenty yards long and twenty feet high where it reached the channel.  For 12 hours a day we sat comfortably on the soft mud.  However, during that winter, the mud froze and so did the tide on its way in and out.  The sea froze around us and you could hear the ice cracking when the tide turned.  The boat, normally toasty if in salt water, was quite cold.  We had a wonderful little cast iron pot bellied stove   that burnt anything and throughout that winter we foraged for wood, using a collapsed, broken down jetty nearby.  With some surprise, when Spring arrived, we realised that we had burnt the whole of this long jetty..  hopefully no-one else noticed it's gradual decline.  The stove is no longer, having gone the way of the majority of her interior, sadly.


Again, on a mud berth at the mouth of the river Axe at Uphill in Somerset, 1978/9.  Same thing happened.  Poor Gareth was just crawling and because he was so low down, we had to make sure he hadn't turned blue and constantly had to lift him up so that he could enjoy the warmer air at the top of the cabin.  We put all our old coats and blankets, and sheepskins on the cabin sole to give us a little more insulation.  


And then, in Bristol, we were out of the water, on the hard for nearly 2 years whilst Sam was doing her first major rebuild.  One winter was particularly cold - a few nights were minus 18 degrees F.  During that time we had to boil a kettle of water and then unfreeze the standpipes in the yard in order to fill our 5 gallon containers with fresh water.  The calor gas cylinders had to have the hot water treatment too when it was below freezing!

River Axe, Uphill 1979

Haydn, and Bonnie, Mylor

The most vivid memory though is because of the time of year.  Christmas has always been a bit of a challenge for me, but the best Christmas ever was spent in the middle of Mylor Creek - stranded on the mud when the tide was out.

We arrived in Mylor harbour, Cornwall in December 1976. A quiet sail around Lands End from Padstow found us safe in Mylor on December 23rd. We tied up against the quay and were told by a confident local fisherman that we would be safe and sound there unless an Easterly blew, but winds from that direction were extremely rare - he said!. Well, you guessed it, 12 hours later, on Christmas Eve, a vicious East wind piped up, rapidly becoming a full gale. Whilst the tide was receding Britannia received a terrible pounding and we thought we were going to lose her. The noise of the wind and of Britannia crashing against the quay wall and the sea bottom as she was grounding was terrifying. We had no insurance, Britannia was everything we had. We knew no-one in Mylor and had nowhere to go. Haydn was just 3. Sam just had to keep our home safe, there was no other option.


As soon as the tide was right out and Britannia was grounded, Sam checked further along the river and we made the decision to take her there as soon as the next tide came in.

Whilst Haydn and I went to the pantomime in Falmouth, -  a wonderful production of Snow White -  Sam made all the necessary arrangements to move Britannia as soon as we could. So, as she began to float again that evening, we warped her around in the dark, and once floating free, we let go the warps and drifted for about half a mile under bare poles as far as we could go down the river until we were sheltered from the wind. We anchored in the mud in the middle of the river and waited until the tide went out again. The mud was soft enough for us to lie upright, so relieved and happy we managed some sleep!

Mylor Creek after the storm

Next day was Christmas morning.  The dawn was calm with bright clear blue skies and no wind!  Suddenly we heard a knocking on Britannia's hull and to our shock, looking over the side, we were confronted by 2 local fishermen who had waded through the deep, soft mud by pushing a dinghy in front of them. They had brought us some goodies and had come to see if we were OK! I believe a few drinks were imbibed....an act of kindness indeed.