jelly & James
Would you like to hear a story? It’s a very cool story. It’s the story of how James and I met.
James is a sailor, you see. And I sail a lot. In March 2008, I went on an Easter sailing weekend with Dream or Two as extra practice for my RYA/MCA Coastal Skipper exam. To cut a VERY long story short, everything went wrong on that trip (unusually so!). Right down to one of the other customers deciding to do an easter egg hunt on the boat, putting mini chocolate eggs everywhere on deck so we ended up being showered with the things whenever we put a sail up for the rest of the day. Worst of all, one ended up in a winch handle hole. It fit perfectly. We could not get it out. In the end Jannine, the instructor/skipper/principal of Dream or Two mashed it up with a pair of scissors. The scissors ended up going overboard. So you get the point - everything went wrong.
On our way back home into Portsmouth Harbour, we thought that nothing else could possibly go wrong - we’d experienced it all.
I was on the coach roof doing something with the mains’l, as we’d just got it down and had turned the engine on to motor into our marina. All of a sudden I heard the helmswoman shout “Fire! The boat’s on fire!” Thinking it must be a joke, I turned round to look. Sure enough, there was smoke pouring out of the transom (the back of the boat) and curling up the companionway from the inside.
Oh shit. Seriously? We were on fire?
Jannine went down to investigate, armed with a fire extinguisher. The first thing she did was turn the engine and batteries off. Then Jannine peered through the tiny hole in the engine compartment but couldn’t see any flames, so we waited to see if the smoke started to disperse. Luckily enough, it did - we had miraculously avoided a fire.
To cut another long story short, we ended up waaay out of the harbour entrance, drifting around in the middle of all the big ferries and warships coming and going. We needed a tow into our marina, so Jannine got on her mobile and the senior dockmaster came out in a RIB to tow us back in. I was positioned on the bow for the duration of the tow, keeping an eye on the towing lines and being ready to adjust them if necessary. It took us nearly two hours before we were alongside, battling against a 4knot tide. Jannine and the rest of the crew joked that I had spent 2 hours up on the bow admiring James.
And so it began, and here we are now. It was a cool story, right?
P.S. You can catch us on Facebook - we are ‘James Anderton’ and ‘Jelly Gee’ (not my real name).
jelly & James in the cockpit of Milestone whilst underway