Burnham Rally May 2009

HNYC boats leaving Burnham. Photo by Wil Pretty.

Click photo for more pictures by Mark Bloomfield, Wil Pretty, Julian Woods, Nick Holloway and moi.

With the misleading prospect of a sunny bank holiday weekend with little wind, most of our 12 boats set off on Saturday morning. Some flew spinnakers to make progress but most used the iron mainsail for the first half of the 40 mile trip. With neap tides this year, no-one tried the Havengore short-cut. On entering the Crouch, the breeze stiffened, giving us an exhilarating close reach into Burnham, where we were welcomed efficiently in the yacht harbour. The following HNYC boats were there: Chica, Comus, Dulali, Gee Bee Jay, Jemima, Maia, Oceanraptor, Sisu, Snowbound, Sunny, Symphony and Wychway.

On Sunday a jovial crowd piled onto Maia for a pleasant trip to the pub at North Fambridge, where the Abbotts ale was found to be in excellent condition. By the now the breeze was really getting up and we witnessed some hair-raising class racing and a spectacular spinnaker broach. Many beautiful boats were racing, including the Burnham One Designs, Squibs, Dragons and old gaffers. I was delighted to see my old boat, Puffin, a Pandora International, looking good tacking up the river, followed by octogenarian cruiser-writer Charles Stock in his 17ft engineless gaff cutter Shoal Waters

On the Sunday evening we had dinner at the famous Royal Burnham Yacht Club; nothing but the best will do these days. We received a royal welcome and a superb dinner in sumptuous surroundings. Pete Everiss (Snowbound) brought many friends from Gillingham Marina and we hope to see them again at Hoo if they can bring themselves to cross the Medway one of these days. We would have been joined by more friends from Queenborough YC but owing to a mix-up they thought the dinner was on Saturday and used that as an excuse to dine on their Commodore's no doubt excellent shepherds pie instead. I hope it was nice and that we'll see them on another occasion.

By Sunday evening the weather forecast had deteriorated to SW force 5/6, on the nose, wind-over-tide for our return to the Medway. We should all know by now that this is what happens every bank holiday Monday, but in the end it was only a force 4/5 at most. However many of us set off before the optimum time to avoid any strong winds and ended up with a frustratingly long journey home, plugging the tide which stubbornly refused to turn when it was supposed to, held back by the strong south-westerly wind.

Tony Lavelle
Rear Commodore

Date Published 18th May 2009