Three days out of Ridge

[Gummage]

My guest was one of my oldest friends who I met at college in 1977. The finest of company and a rare someone who could look upon spending three days living on Endeavour three with Gummage as a great adventure.

TUESDAY
The drive down from Wiltshire was beautiful. The launch was easy and the cruise through the harbour was uneventful save a quick slide on the mud where a red pole is missing. Someone has replaced it with an anchor buoy but at first sight it looks like a bit of flotsam. If you go up there watch for this and go round the buoy. Turns out we weren’t to be the only one thus fooled. Otherwise the trip to the ocean was uneventful, no explosions. 

 
This trip was a retry. Look up “It went with a bang” to see how it ended last time.

We paused for breakfast and a mackerel hunt by the Hook Sands where first catch of the day was a Gurnard to Ian which took the slow jig we had under the feathers .🎣

 

I decided to go west to Peverill ledge. Club members warned us to be careful on the flowing tide. We stayed well out and were able to drift in the chop and the fresh 10 mile an hour breeze. We used sidewinders whole squid feathers slow jig and even a squid jig for a couple of hours.

All we caught for the rest of the day were two small scad. One was volunteered for  bass patrol to no avail.
With the tide flowing in the late afternoon we tried anchoring a ridge mark. No knocks.
We moved on to Bournemouth in the early evening. After losing a few rounds of bait  to something small and annoying we decided we were tired enough and set off to ridge. 
 

At the river Frome The missing navigation pole had snared a victim. Three folks in an inboard engined 18 foot(or so) boat were sat firmly on the mud a couple of foot above the water line. They got off at the next high.

WEDNESDAY
Went into Wareham for petrol and a bacon sandwich.
It was 9 o’clock before we chuffed out of Ridge .
It was a beautiful start for the day, but we knew the wind was forecast to get up.
It takes an hour from here to get down the harbour and it wasn’t until 11 o’clock that we found ourselves at the 50-50’s

Another Club member Graham Nash on Samoya had already been there for a productive couple of hours. Encouraging!

 

The conditions were initially languid and we chucked squid and worm Bates down on a very slow drift.
They included a whole squid with two big hooks in it, a shark‘s breakfast! This was to produce our only catch there; a 12 ounce bream.🎣

 

As per forecast the wind got up blowing from the SW against the tide  and we found ourselves drifting uptide at half a knot. Anchoring was in the original plan but I dropped it.(The plan, not the anchor)The other boat had a mixed bag of dogfish,bream eel and smoothie. It’s the early bird that catches the worm!

We ran in on the blow and anchored 1 mile out at the rocky pool patch. Wind over tide as before produced a maverick anchor set up.
We bounced caught rocks  and nothing else.
Went on to Bournemouth to Plaice drift . Ian had a lively Gurnard but at about 4.00 a pub supper beckoned and we gave it best

 

A tomahawk pork steak and a Purbeck cider or two hit the spot. Then a gentle stagger back down the river towpath to the boat 

The full moon rising to make it an entirely memorable evening.

 

DAY THREE
 It was never going to be the earliest of starts to a short session.
After 3.30 there wouldn’t be enough water at ridge to retrieve the boat on the steep slip. So a short day.
We left at nine and slipped down to Poole

Ian Bought a small pack of fresh worm while I waited at the town steps.

The bridge upstream had just lifted and boats came through from Cobbs quay. 

We got a cheery greeting from Chris Witherford on Kingfisher. A top club angler. He went plaice fishing outside the harbour along the swash. It would be a good plan and he welcomed us to shadow him; even gave us some ******(it’s no for me to give his secrets away😉) to cap our worm baits with. 

We had a good couple of hours and caught three plaice( two keepers) and a bream. At 1.30, time to run in.
  
NO GOOD TURN GOES UNPUNISHED

 

As we ran up the Frome on our tight schedule we came upon the missing Nav pole’s next victim.
At the same spot as before a 30 foot yacht was teetering in the mud.
Ian advised,”Don’t get involved.”
I probably should have heeded.

 

The vessel had deployed a rear anchor which had set but its keel was just in the mud and it was pinned to the bank by a cross wind

I figured my 60 horse power could get him off before it got worse. (I wish 
I’d left him there; and so does he I expect)

How? 
I found that by reversing into the crosswind I had good control; upsteam ,downstream, backward, forward. 

I suggested picking up his anchor line with a loop of rope and pulling there. That idea was rejected by the other skipper. Perhaps he feared the salvage rules?
Instead he threw me a line from his rear starboard cleat and Ian OXO tied it to our bow sprit.

I was concentrating hard on not becoming the next victim here and doing well at it thus far.

As I put the power on to initiate the tow I had to look lively as E3 was becoming wind driven as I knew she would.
Then, is this unlucky or what? As the tow line tensioned it didnt draw up out of the water straight as I expected but span like it does when two people work a skipping rope.

Why is that a problem? Because it flicked behind his port side mounted auxiliary outboard and before I could throttle down, it lifted it off its mounting and dropped it in the drink🫩.

Whilst both of us had that heart sinking feeling it wasn’t a reason to abandon the tow.

 

E3 controlled well and a burst of power had the yacht following me across the channel  . Ian was on constant standby to cast us off if we lost control. 
I know this is a danger when towing a vessel Thats bigger than you are. But we manoeuvred around and set to towing down stream to a wider part of the channel.

But we made no progress . Nobody had attended the anchor line and as we pulled his boat round the line had gone over his prop and the anchor was still set beyond.🫩

Perhaps I might have tried to clear that rope with my boat hook, but it didn’t occur to me at the time , and time was running out For us . 

 

When I came upon the scene I might perhaps have called the coastguard for him.

 

When I left, perhaps I should have called the Samaritans .

 

Everything else went fine.

 

[great white]

 Brlliant report Martin.. Thanks