Pasties, Pilotage and a Flask of Tea: In Defence of the Day Afloat

The opposite of a schedule

There is a kind of boating that begins with a phone call to a marina and ends with a bill. There is also the kind that begins with a look at the tide table, a look at the sky, and the words: shall we take lunch somewhere?

This is the second kind. It does not get much coverage in the magazines, because nothing much happens. You leave the mooring at a civilised hour. You sail or motor gently for two or three hours. You anchor, or dry out, or nose onto a beach. You eat. You lie about. You come home with sand in the cockpit and a bit of colour in your face.

In a classic boat, that is not a poor use of a day. It is arguably the best one available.

What goes in the basket

A half-decked cruiser with a shallow cockpit imposes a certain discipline, and the discipline improves the picnic. Where there is no fridge, no worktop and nowhere to put a glass down safely, everything travels flat and comes out better behaved.

A few hard-won rules. Decant the drink into a flask or a good bottle with a screw cap - glass in a heeled cockpit is a hazard and a waste. Choose food that survives being sat on in a canvas bag: pork pie, a proper pasty, bread, a wedge of cheese, tomatoes, something pickled. Take one good knife and a small board rather than six gadgets. Enamel mugs are worth their weight. Pack a damp cloth in a bag, a rubbish bag that actually closes, a blanket for the sun that will inevitably disappear, and a spare layer for the one that will inevitably arrive.

And a flask of tea. Always a flask of tea. It is the single most useful piece of equipment on board.

Taking the ground, taking your time

Half-deckers, bilge keelers and anything with a bit of girth underneath have an advantage the deep-keeled crowd can only admire: they can sit on the mud and wait. That opens up whole stretches of coast and river that never appear in a pilot book's anchoring section.

Pick your spot with the tide table in one hand and the chart in the other. Arrive an hour before high water, settle in, eat on the flood, and watch the water drain away to reveal a world of worm casts, oystercatchers and a hull you can walk round with a critical eye. This is pilotage in its oldest and most satisfying form - no instruments, just a bearing, a look at the shore and a bit of common sense.

Three runs worth the tide

The Helford, Cornwall. Launch or berth at Gweek or Helford Passage and drift down on the ebb with the woods coming right down to the water. Anchor off for lunch, then take the dinghy up Frenchman's Creek on the flood. There is nothing to do when you get there, which is precisely the appeal.

Chichester Harbour, Hampshire. East Head on a settled day is a picnic ground that has been enjoyed since long before anyone thought to call it a destination. Dry out on the sand, walk the dunes, keep half an eye on the weather coming up from the west.

The Deben, Suffolk. Work up on the flood past the moorings and the reed beds, anchor off a quiet reach near Butley or Ramsholt, and eat while the light does its late-afternoon thing across the marshes. The half-decker will take the ground happily if you misjudge it, which is a forgiving quality in a boat and a useful one in a skipper.

The Menai Strait, Anglesey. Slack water is your friend and the scenery is preposterous in the best way. Anchor off the Anglesey shore, watch the world go by sideways, and time the return for the tide turning in your favour.

The cockpit as dining room

A classic cockpit has a thing that no modern cockpit quite manages: proportion. The coaming is at the right height to lean on. The seats are long enough to lie down on. The locker lid makes a table if you put a cloth over it. Two people can eat facing each other without shouting, and four can manage if everyone is fond of everyone else.

Add a boom tent in the late afternoon and it becomes a sitting room. Add a mug and a book and it becomes the only place in Britain that is genuinely quiet.

Analog afternoon

Part of the pleasure is the deliberate absence of hurry. Put the phone below. Get out the paper chart, fold it the wrong way, and look at where you actually are. Log the anchorage with a pencil. Count the oystercatchers. Notice that the wind has backed and the clouds have gone a particular shade of grey, and decide, calmly, that it is time to go.

That is the whole argument, really. Modern boating is very good at getting places. Classic boating is rather better at being somewhere.

The homeward leg

By five o'clock the light is going, the flask is empty, the sails are up and the tide is doing half the work for you. There is a faint smell of varnish and a faint crust of salt on the topsides. Someone is asleep under a fleece in the cockpit well and someone else is helming with a hand on the tiller and a look of complete contentment on their face.

You will get back to the mooring later than you meant to, and you will eat something unambitious for supper, and you will look at the tide table before you go to bed, because the forecast for Sunday is decent.

Pack the hamper. There is still a headland you have not had lunch under.