It's a tradition that dates back centuries. When the captain of a sailing ship wrote the heading on the logbook at the start of each voyage, he didn't write “London to Rio” as if it was a foregone conclusion that he would get there.
Instead he wrote “London: destination Rio” because he accepted that there was a strong chance that weather, tide or some other factor entirely beyond his control would force a change of plan, and he might end up somewhere different entirely.
These days most of us make much shorter voyages, and have better weather info before we leave, so there's less likelihood that we won't get to the intended destination, but it does still happen.
This last weekend was a case in point. We had a MainSail team outing on Brave, an offshore testing weekend, to assess some of the latest gear and gadgets in the context they were designed for.
On board were skipper Richard, me, Roxanna Maynard, who as well as being a MainSail mainstay also has hundreds of miles of offshore race experience, and Susan Vittery, who has just joined the site as a writer, and has a Competent Crew certificate.
The weather forecast was horrible. South westerly 5-7 with a possibility of gales later, and a promise of plenty of showers. But we had a deadline to meet, so we decided to go anyway - and head south west!
That's not actually as silly as it sounds. The thinking was that, with a crew we had not sailed with before, and whose strengths and weaknesses we did not know, we would set off upwind, and if they or we found we didn't like it, we could just turn round and get back quickly and easily downwind.
So we set off from Harwich Harbour towards Burnham. In that much weather, with a lumpy sea, the shallow Spitway isn't suitable for our draft below half tide, so we went round the end of the Gunfleet - offshore. There was plenty of wind (two reefs in the main plus a few rolls in the heavy weather jib) but the boat was loving it and the sun was shining. The crew were quite happy, too.
Roxy and Susan took turns steering, and everything was going well. I was particularly appreciating the Henri Lloyd Offshore Goretex oilskins I was testing (review to follow…).
We saw a couple of ominous black shower clouds, but they kindly passed us by. It was not until we were approaching the Crouch that a big squall finally hit.
And that is one of the nastiest places you can be in bad weather. The channel is narrow, bordered on both sides by very solid sandbanks, treacherously steep-to in places. The seas became really confused. We couldn't lay the course. And just there you can't even rely on the electronic plotter to keep you in safe water because the sand is always on the move.
I can never forget that one of the most experienced racing teams on the East Coast came to grief there in just such conditions. They hit the sand and lost the keel and had to take to the liferaft - and that was a Burnham-based boat that knew the waters backwards.
This was the “possible 8” the Met Office had warned of. And the latest inshore waters forecast from the Coastguard said the weather was going to be even worse the next day. There seemed little to be said for carrying on. We span round and headed back out to open water. For such conditions are really no problem, as long as you have searoom.
The squall lasted 10 or 15 minutes, and at the wheel Richard had a huge grin on his face, surfing down the waves, but then when the wind dropped again (it was still blowing quite hard) reality dawned.
We'd been nearly at Burnham, and now we had to sail all the way back to where we had come from, because in those conditions there was still no chance of cutting through the Spitway and heading for the Blackwater.
And we had to do it against the tide. We couldn't have timed it worse. We plugged the flood all the way to Harwich, got there at dead high water - and ended up plugging the ebb up the Orwell to Levington!
So it was quite a long day at sea: plenty of time for gear testing. And at the end of it all, the log entry reads Levington to Levington. But when we talked about it with friends in the Yacht Club bar afterwards, they all agreed that we had done the right thing.
“Sometimes it takes more courage to turn back than to carry on,” one very experienced yachtie observed. I've been clinging to that consolation.
