Rutland Water

Rutland Water Sailability weekend.

My wife and I can only go sailing because of the generousity of others. In our case we are particularly grateful to Ipswich Rotary Clubs who have funded our boat seen here. We set out in the early hours of Thursday morning travelling up the A1 before the traffic built up. We had a break at Kates Cabin near the Peterborough Showground and we had a short sleep. One of the problems of being a disabled pensioner is that I cannot drive long hours without a sleep, hence our sleeper VW van. When we arrived at Rutland Water we met Sam Honour and his parents Janice and Brian who indicated we should go into the resturaunt for a refreshing cup of tea. Sam and Brian re-joined us within a few minutes and informed us our boat was ready. Incredibly they had taken it off our monster trailer and rigged it ready to race. We were introduced to a few fellow disabled sailors and advised what would happen on Friday. On Friday we were so anxious to get sailing and find out about the course we missed the briefing for the day and when we encountered Simon, the RYA trainer who trained us at the East Anglian Sailing Trust at Suffolk Yacht Harbour, Levington we were not aware of what we were supposed to be doing was practising starts but we soon fell in with his instructions. It was quite windy and in fact the conditions were more like sailing on the River Orwell than on an inland waterway. We frequently baled out water and noticed we were not alone in becoming waterlogged. After three hours of wild water we and the other sailors were worn. We retired to our sleeper which has an Eberspacher diesel heater and soon we were dry and warm again. We went to the barbeque that night and then retired early worn out only to find our leisure battery had been drained by our electric cool box so we had to go for a run to charge the battery up again. When we returned the gate was locked so we slept outside until 8am when staff arriving for work opened the gate and let us back in.
Saturday we were due to race twice in the morning and twice in the afternoon but the weather had different plans for us. The first two race were eye openers fo us as we were racing in large waves with the wind knocking us over evrytime we tacked. The rules prevented us reefing the sails so we were knocked over regularly and Judy seemed to be working on the baling non stop and still we were sitting in water. That is how deep the water inside the boat was! We had decided to reef up for the afternoon racing but in the event that was cancelled as quite a few sailors had declined to start the morning races. We had a lovely dinner supplied by the Rutland Water Sailing Club and we cannot recommend their hospitality enough. The disabled facilities were better than we had ever seen before enabling us to have a shower every night. The next day the leisure battery was flat again and we had to run the engine for an hour to get it charged. Sunday we raced once at 1030hrs and then carried on to the pursuit race which finished at 1400hrs when we returned to the van to warm up only to find the battery flat again so we had a hot shower and then Brian Honour and Sam Honour loaded our boat for us. Brian spent much time repairing a Woolverstone Project multihull challenger during the weekend as well as helping us out. Without Brian, Sam and the Woolverstone Project supported by the Ipswich Rotary Clubs this would all have been impossible for us. We noticed many other boats were also funded by the Rotary Clubs from their area so quite obviously without the support of various Rotary Clubs across the UK many other disabled sailor also would not have been able to sail. We are extremely grateful for all the help we received and now we are busy planning our next meeting on the Access Dinghy Traveller Circuit.
Peter and Judy Turtill