TRIP REPORTS : THE FELIS CATUS YEARS

MY LONGEST CRUISE, Summer 1979

Part 3 : Retracing our steps to Peterborough

Click on a picture to see a bigger version with a caption

We resume the story at Bedford, on the Great Ouse.

We started at 10:00, retracing our steps down the Great Ouse. We took on water at Kitchener’s Marina, and the log notes "the promised loo-point not built yet". We stopped for breakfast before Willington lock, one of the new ones, with a big weir right alongside.

In the year that the navigation had been re-opened before our visit, this weir had deposited a substantial scour almost in the exit from the lock, and we duly found ourselves hard aground on it after we locked through. Our efforts with poles came to nothing, as did an attempt by another boat to pull us off. Fortunately a more powerful boat came along a little later which did manage to get us on the move again.

That evening we moored at St Neot’s at 17:38, having at last found a sani-station. Roger, Ian and I did some running repairs just before the rain arrived.

Roger and Chris both went back to London, leaving us three-handed. Wendy did some odds and ends of shopping and we set off at 09:04 in drizzly weather. We had breakfast on the move. During the morning we met up below Offord lock with a hire-boat with engine trouble and breasted up to tow them to Brampton lock, where they could ‘phone their base for assistance. Then we turned into the backwater at Godmanchester for fizzy beer at the Royal Oak. The evening brought us to St Ives, where we moored in the lee of a high quay and went shopping in the rain. We were having some trouble with our cabin water pump, so decided to put into St Ives Boathaven in the morning to get it looked at. After dinner we played Scrabble and I won.

This was one of the most frightening days’ boating I can remember.

Under the lee of the quay at St Ives we didn't notice until we set off at 10:49 that there was one heck of a lot of wind. Because Felis Catus rode so bows-high she was an absolute weather-cock and once we were out in the main channel we were crabbing along at quite an angle to our intended line. The manoeuvre into the Boathaven was quite tricky. They did a temporary repair to the water pump, but we had to nurse it quite a lot for the rest of the season and had it rebuilt the next winter. We used their showers.

In retrospect we would have been wise to have stayed in the Boathaven for the rest of the day, but we set off for some more sideways boating.

At Hermitage lock, as the lock-keepers came out to help us through, one of them noticed that "yet another" of the big trees in the vicinity had blown down in the last hour. They also told us that the wind there had been measured as force nine that morning. And that’s quite a long way inland. We asked them if there were any sheltered moorings on the Old West River, and the nearest they could recommend was at Stretham Ferry, nearly nine miles away.

In the narrow channel of the Old West River, our boat’s determination to crab along at an angle became a major problem. For quite a bit of the way we were scraping the mud with both ends of the boat on opposite banks. Trees were falling down all over the scenery and we were really scared at the way so many of the waterside ones looked ready to follow suit just as we passed under them.

It was 17:15 when we reached the promised shelter at Stretham Ferry and tied up with great relief. The beer at the Royal Oak was very welcome, despite being fizzy stuff from what we then used to refer to as Twitbread’s. I understand the pub has since been re-named the Lazy Otter.

Morning dawned with no wind at all and bright sunshine. The radio news told us that the previous day the yachts in the Fastnet race had mostly sunk in the gale. But now it was glorious. We set off at 08:51 and went about a mile to stop and visit Stretham Old Engine, a beam engine with a water-scoop wheel built to pump land-drainage water up into the river.

Then came breakfast on the move as we headed down-river to a lunchtime stop at Ely. We dealt with laundry and shopping, lunched again at the Minster Tavern, used the sani station in one of the boatyards, and resumed cruising.

We decided to explore one of the Ouse tributaries, and settled on the Wissey for no particular reason. This proved very attractive, although we had a lot of trouble from floating weed necessitating a lot of trips down the weed-hatch. They were cutting weed further upstream, and it was allowed to float down. Presumably they see so few boats there that they don't see it as a problem. But it certainly was one for us and we were quite tired and frustrated by the time we moored for the night at The Bull at Stoke Ferry where we drank some Watney's "Norwich" before dinner.

The return trip down the Wissey was weed-free, sunny and thoroughly enjoyable. We started at 08:21, had breakfast on the move, stopped for a while at Hilgay (mainly to find a bank), and reached Denver in time for a leisurely pint at the Jenyns Arms while waiting for the tide to be right for the crossing to Salter’s Lode.

Denver Sluice

While we were waiting for the tide to arrive (it was a neap tide and later than expected), there was a large Anglian Water Authority launch pootling around in what little water there was in the tidal section, waiting to go down the Hundred Foot as soon as there was water in it. He was getting impatient, the lock-keeper explained to us, as he had to pick up a tow at Earith and bring it back on the same tide. The moment came where the launch skipper decided there was enough water for him to go. I guess he'd decided there wasn’t enough depth for him to go down in displacement mode, so he had to "get up on the step" and plane. So he gave it all the welly he had and shot off down the river at a heck of a lick, with a bow-wave standing about twice the height of his not inconsiderable superstructure. We wondered what the navigation authority would have thought of anyone other than one of their own boats who did the same.

Eventually the lock-keeper told us there was enough water in the river for us to make the crossing to Salter’s Lode, and we locked out. There was a lot of tide running, but by sticking fairly close to the edge apart from when we cut across to the other side, we had no great difficulty making headway against it even with our small, elderly engine. But when we reached Salter’s Lode it was quite a different story. The entrance to the lock from the tideway is quite a sharp dog-leg and a tidal eddy was pushing us into it a lot faster than I felt happy with. I made the classic mistake of putting the engine into reverse and losing steering way. We stemmed up with a resounding thump. From the steering position at the stern I could see the wooden sides of the boat flex outwards an amazingly long way and then spring back. Crashes from below marked the death of much of our glassware.

We got into the lock, locked through and tied up, all a-tremble. Examination showed, not surprisingly, that all the joints between the cabin and the gunnels had opened up. Nothing that a couple of tubes of mastic (always in stock on an old wooden boat) couldn't take care of. At 18:23 we moored in March and Ian caught the train home, while Wendy and I went first to an Irish pub and then to a fish-and-chip shop.

The morning was spent shopping, and lunch was in The Cock. We started at 12:47 and a gentle afternoon cruise brought us to Peterborough for the night at 17:42.