There Is Only One Wellie On This SCOD!
It was one of those typical Tuesday race evenings – I had gone over to ‘Stirling’ at CCYC a bit earlier before all the crew arrived to do odd repairs after a hectic Cowes Week.
Around 1800 hrs the crew arrived to set up the sails and sheets while I quickly put away all the tools and remembered leaving my pair of brown sailing Wellington’s on the saloon floor.
That evening we had an excellent spinnaker start and came in 3rd – which was a good result and we all thoroughly enjoyed a lovely sail in a warm evening breeze. On finishing we moored up, stowed the sails, tidied up and retired to the bar.
However, on returning to the mooring the next day to check a few other things and noticed to my surprise a lone right Wellington boot on the cabin floor. Where was the other one? On these wooden boats you do have many nooks and crannies just above the cabin floor where things can get lost, always ending up in one of the storage pockets and somehow winding their way upwards behind the timber runners under the bunks. If you are good at Yoga you would have no trouble looking around!!
So I spent some time searching for the absent wellie all over the boat and couldn’t find it anywhere. I thought maybe it went overboard when I was tidying up – but no – I remembered both of them being there when my crew (Big John – Little Jon and Chris) arrived! I thought I might actually be going mad as you do at my age – so, never one to give up easily, I plucked up the courage to phone the crew one by one.
No, they had not accidentally packed one wellie in their bags last night!!! Well we all couldn’t believe it – we all remembered at one point whilst racing 2 boots being there on the floor and one of the crew actually remembered just before we departed seeing only one – but did not think much of it – until I phoned him.
Days went by – I slept on it a few nights still thinking where could the lone wellie be? By now the news had got round the club and I asked a few people that if they saw a boot on its own wandering about lost –it’s mine!!! The following weekend Marion and I went cruising – for a quiet weekend sail to Beaulieu for one night and then over to Hamble for another and hoping the boot might turn up out of the blue, but it was not to be.
Eventually I gave up – took the right boot home and thought maybe I could sell that one on e-bay! I even thought perhaps the other one would turn up the next Tuesday evening when the crew came for the next race and they would hand it back and say it was an April fools joke in August!! But when Chris arrived he said he and his wife Anne had been thinking hard where my little boot had gone. He started his own search just a few minutes before we cast off. Suddenly Chris called from down from below and asked me to look at the spinnaker bag and feel the lump inside!
I could not believe it! Or I may have said, “ I don’t believe it” in Victor Meldrew mode.
Chris and Anne had solved ‘The Mystery of the Lost Wellie’. Anne suggested whether any one had checked out the spinnaker bag? How she thought of that was beyond comprehension; well done Anne! To my amazement on opening up the bag and pulling out the spinnaker – there it was in all its glory!!
We had a great laugh, and then I had a very funny thought! If we had not found it then – we speculated as to what would have happened?
That night it was to be a spinnaker start and we could have hoisted the kite with the big left wellie still inside!! Can you imagine, we laughed, seeing the boot flying out over the mast and into the sea – never to be seen again!! And more embarrassingly seeing the other sailors near us in their yachts looking on and laughing!! Thankfully that was only a nightmare!
How did the boot get in there in the first place you might now ask?
Well Chris admitted it was he who packed the spinnaker in the bag the last time between the leeward and windward marks, with 400 sq foot of material and loads of sheets down below amongst a wandering pair of wellies – one of them obviously got entangled inside the sail and was nicely hidden away in the bag ready for the next hoist – fortunately we did not need to hoist it again that evening!
Well you will be delighted to know the pair are now happily back together again and keeping my two feet nice and dry for the next season and hopefully many seasons to come.
Yours almost embarrassed,
Jaik Tari
Yacht Stirling
PS The moral of this story is never leave a pair of wellies on the your cabin floor when packing spinnakers! We will never do that again.
PPS Thank you to all the members of CCYC for the many and varied suggestions of what to do with the other wellie – I shall keep it in mind for the future just in case!