October 16, 2006: A Piece of String and a Whim: Voyage Back to Childhood Stomping Grounds
by Michel & Jane DeRidder

We had just finished our first charter season out of St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands when a Russian cruise ship appeared. Now this was 1968, in the height of the Cold War. Still, several of our Canadian contingent decided it would be fun to try our luck at going aboard. Armed with passports and smiles, dressed in our Sunday-Go-to-Meeting best, we asked for permission to board. We ended up drinking vodka neat in the dark, formal ship's library, making conversation as best we could.

In this library there was a large globe of the world on a wooden stand. Idly, Michel stretched a piece of string from the Antilles to Belgium saying, "Look — it isn't far!"

And with that, we borrowed charts, and three weeks later we were off. We were young and gung ho; we thought nothing of crossing an ocean on a whim and the smell of an oily rag, for a few weeks' holiday from our vacation.

Those were the days when we did not keep night watches. We set the wind vane to sail close-hauled, hard on the wind on starboard tack. We stayed there for two weeks as we punched E.N.E. to windward into the trades. Later one of the few ships we encountered woke us by playing strong spotlights on our boat. We were running then, wing-and-wing in a rough sea, under reduced sail, with wind vane steering. We reassured them of our safety as best we could by turning on our spreader lights and going on deck, waving, since we had no radio transmitter of any kind.

After 27 days and 3500 miles we cleared customs in Falmouth, Cornwall. It was an anxious, foggy landfall, following two weeks of overcast weather that had only allowed us a few sun sights through the clouds. We had some doubtful radio beacon signals to confirm our uncertain dead reckoning navigation. We had bypassed the Azores, as the sailing at the time was too good to interrupt. Besides, our time was limited; another charter season was looming.

Nearly freezing to death, we explored the Cornwall coast by motorcycle to Lands End, stopping in St. Ives and Mousehole (pronounced Mowzel). We weathered a red mud rain ("a Spanish dust storm"), and did a few jobs — repairs as well as the usual routine maintenance. Also we had our injectors serviced, took on fuel, collected forwarded mail. We found out that our English-made depthsounder had been repaired all right, but sent back to the Virgin Islands by mistake. (This meant lead line sounding through Holland and Belgium.) We bought charts of the Belgian portion of our trip and a Reeds Nautical Almanac, a treasury of essential information. A friendly skipper invited us out on a tug with huge chamber pots of tea in hand to escort a ship into port; he had the wing of a skate hanging to tenderise, and this he shared with us. We met up with a host of locals and fellow voyagers, including friends on Tzu Hang. We dinghied up the Fal River where we were attacked in a narrow bend by a swan concerned for the safety of its cygnets. Then we finally headed for Michel's childhood stomping grounds. Crossing the foggy English Channel across shipping lanes without radar was certainly one of the hairiest of any of our adventures.

We entered Belgium at Nieuport, where Michel had spent so many of his boyhood summers. Here the shock was in discovering that we were far too large and beamy to fit easily into the tiny port, an old German U-boat base from World War II. We were accustomed to being the smallest yacht in the charter fleet, but here we were a giant among dwarves. We moored ourselves in the middle, tied between buoys and our own anchors. Not far away was a huge monument to King Leopold, designed by Michel's father, who had died five years before. Overseeing its construction was the reason for the family's summers in Nieuport. We were persuaded to escort a group of British Army kayakers across the Channel to Margate, Kent. Since we could do with the cash, we succumbed, after insisting that as soon as we got out of sight of land we would take them aboard and tow the kayaks, then have them paddle off as we neared their destination. On the return trip that evening, because I misread the tide tables, we corrected wrongly for current, ending up well north of our projected course. It wasn't until the middle of the night that we, with two of Michel's seasick nieces, arrived back to wedge ourselves into our tight spot, just before a storm broke that washed a child off a jetty and a camper off a beach. Thank goodness we'd insisted on getting those lads to England in a hurry!

This is a postcard that we have had on the bulkhead for several years...showing a young lad very like Michel, sailing a model yacht on a park pond just the way he did at that age. That's how he learned to sail when he was a kid in Brussels.

After this we headed off toward Brussels, Michel's hometown, accompanied this time by one of his sisters and a brother-in-law. Once again a careless misjudgement nearly got us into trouble when we strayed into a weapons testing area on our way to the entrance to the Schelde River in Holland. Belgian anti-aircraft guns were shooting live ammo at a target-towing remote-controlled airplane flying above us. They actually missed the target and shot the plane down as we sailed under. Stopping to clear Dutch customs, Magic Dragon got caught in the strong current and did wheelies while we were trying to tie up alongside a concrete dock, upsetting an already stressed mate. That afternoon, after we'd tied up in the Dutch port of Fleskens, without saying anything to anyone, I jumped ship, taking my passport, travellers' checks and toothbrush. Shelly reassured our passengers by saying I'd probably gone to England where I had an uncle and aunt I was very fond of. Instead, I walked into the village, had a lovely dinner with half a bottle of white wine, and then took in a performance of "The Sound of Music". Cheered and calmed, I wandered back to the boat only to find Michel fast asleep, and the other two frantic with worry.

The trip to Brussels up the canals was not all easy; our engine at that time — the original 35hp Isuzu — was inadequate for the job. Motoring under seven knots, we got in the way of barges travelling at eight-nine knots. Many times we had to pull off to let commercial traffic pass, incurring the curses of bankside fishermen with their long rods. It was at Antwerp that we entered a port behind tidal barriers, closed off for part of each day. We were given a warm welcome by YC personnel, along with profuse apologies that they did not have a Canadian flag to raise in our honour. Nor did we have one to present. The Maple Leaf was a relatively recent switch from the red ensign. Here we were joined by one of Michel's brothers, a Jesuit priest. I accompanied him on the Honda 90 motorcycle so he could say mass. Michel stayed behind, having lapsed many years before. I sat in the back of the church, holding the skid lids, marvelling at life's rich tapestry.

Brussels is considered a "deep sea port", accessible without un-stepping the mast. Bridges open either by swinging outward in the centre, by hinging upward in two halves from either shore, or by raising the centre portion in its entirety. One of this latter type is the one that nearly dismasted us. Bridges never look high enough; we were accustomed to that. However, as we neared this one, with current assist at six or seven knots, in order to stop traffic for the least possible time, I screamed from the bow signalling that it really was NOT high enough. Michel jammed us into reverse, too late. We hit the bridge's massive steel eye beam about a foot below the masthead; Magic Dragon reared up on her hind legs as we hit. A crimped 1x7 galvanized forestay wire was all the damage we suffered. Seems this particular bridge operator had dismasted other yachts, yet from where he sat he had a perfect line of sight to judge the clearance. He obviously didn't like pleasure boats. (We were told he was afraid that if he raised the bridge too high it might get stuck.)

In Brussels the homecoming lad was permitted to tie Magic Dragon to the wall of BRYC in the city's commercial centre for several weeks. We had the motorcycle ashore for transport, a bit rough on cobblestones, so much so that we lost our licence plate. Rather than go through the rigmarole of explaining it all to the authorities, Michel folded down the corner of an outdated Canadian plate to make the 66 look like a 68, thinking how wise we were not to have thrown it away. Family members and school friends visited us there. We hoisted Michel's bedridden Mamy aboard on a chair, using the mainsheet and the boom. (It is a bit deflating to realize that she was younger then than we are now!) Coincidentally, once again, one of Papy's creations looked down on us from not far away — a church he had designed. On our way back out of the river some weeks later, a Canadian maple leaf flew at the Antwerp Yacht Club.

Back in England, we left Magic Dragon "on the trots" in the Hamble River, securely moored to pilings, and went on a land tour by train and bus to see various uncles and aunts, old friends, cousins and ex-charters — and a fairy godmother. In Bath we were wafted via Jaguar to the Bath and County Club for dinner, and to tour the Roman Baths. In the Cotswolds we were met by yet another uncle and aunt, relieved not to see beaded bearded beings emerge from the bus, but relatively respectable ones. And so it went. Lastly was a visit with my godmother with her enormous collection of early English watercolours. We left with an envelope and the instructions, "Don't open it until you get back, and for God's sake, don't lose it!" It turned out to be a cheque for a hundred pounds. We shot the wad in Southampton the next day on tuffnol snatch blocks, turn buckles, spinnaker pole fittings and other such items, not to mention cider, sherry, canned butter and a carpet for the main salon. Thence to the port of Yarmouth on the Isle of Wight to await what we now call "a weather window" while the BBC spewed forth weather reports to curdle the blood including such gems as "Storm Force Eleven".

On our first attempt at leaving, we were fooled by what was only a brief lull, then realised that it was going to be a matter of sailing to windward under triple-reefed main and storm jib. We turned back. It only took us half an hour in the rapidly increasing wind to cover the distance that had taken us over two hours against wind and current.

Days later the wind died altogether, and we motored out over big oily swells, only too happy to go south as quickly as possible before the next blow arrived in the Bay of Biscay. Next stop was Las Palmas in the Canary Islands. Here we encountered as colourful an assortment of salts of various ages and nations as we've met anywhere, including the Hiscocks on their brand new Wanderer IV. A couple of Polish brothers, en route to pay homage to the Kennedy family, refused to believe that Jackie Kennedy had married Onassis. "It's not true!," they insisted.

Then it was across the Atlantic, a good part of the way under spinnaker, to make our landfall in Barbados. After a feverish three days of partying and sightseeing, we carried on to St. Lucia for five days on the St. Lucia Maritime Services Slipway to deal with refinishing the topsides and applying antifouling. The locals were a bit shook up to see me working like a yard employee, riding the Honda and wearing trousers to market. Stops in Martinique, Dominica, and Guadeloupe came next, before the next work stop in English Harbour, Antigua. Here we did a painstaking two-tone deck paint job, repainted coamings, and so it went for a full week till teak, oars, spinnaker poles and all were like new. Then, on we went to the Virgin Islands, ready for another charter season.

We marvel at the stamina and energy of those young folk. Just reading our log of those few weeks exhausts us today!