Coming About--Sorry!

THE Norfolk broads is the name English holidaygoers give to certain confluent rivers, canals, and flooded fens, not, as my wife supposed, because the rivers and canals are so narrow; the broads are the flat fens. Hickling Broad, Wroxham Broad — the names appealed to me, and I hoped I would be sailor enough to reach at least one broad from Potter Heigham, where a rented craft awaited my happy family of four.

The broads country, very near the North Sea, is low and lushly green, drained by dikes and windmills, and built on with red bricks and brown thatch. A reassuring countryside. The sailing prospects, on the other hand, were alarming. The river on which our alarmingly large sailboat, the Perfect Lady IV, was berthed looked barely twice as wide as the Perfect Lady IV was long, and it was lined with bungalows (Dun Rovin) and well-kept lawns and tied-up boats — motorboats, sailing boats, boats, boats, boats. Astern of ours was a low medieval bridge, and as I stood, non-nautical and nervous, I could feel the wind blowing — gently, it is true, but straight toward this bridge. Impossible to sail under the bridge, but equally impossible, I thought, to tack in this narrow river against the wind. A boat came silently under the bridge with two young Englishmen on it (hearts of oak, those British sailors) stoutly pushing up the mast. Imagine, a collapsible mast! Another sailboat, this one manned by girls, came from the other direction, swooped by us, refused the bridge, and started back again. “Sorry,” shouted one of the girls as the two boats passed one another.

“Comfortable enough for you, is she?” said our boat’s attendant as my wife and little Gerda exclaimed delightedly over Perfect Lady IV: the spacious bedrooms, swinging doors that could be hooked open or hooked shut, cockpit large enough to set up the dining table in, central vestibule between the toilet and back stairs (fore hatch?), closets and drawers and storage stocked with food, reservoirs of water, electricity and gas, and over all the mast towering into invisibility.

I agreed she seemed comfortable. I added, “We’ve never sailed quite such a big one,” timidly; Frederic, who is eleven, told me later he would not have said it at all.

Intrepid Frederic. Already he had dropped through the trapdoor on the foredeck, and now he was pushing up canvas. This, as the mainsail was already furled around the boom, would be the little jib sail. All these matters in a boat are covered with private small pieces of string and brass hooking arrangements as charming as the vocabulary that goes with them. We stowed our clothes away, and then, while the attendant took out his pipe, we sat down to plot these. “A similar grommet at the tack,” explained my pocket sailing guide, “attaches in a similar manner to a clevis which is usually part of the gooseneck.” Presently Frederic and I together hauled up the jib sail. It flapped.

“Not much wind,” deduced my wife knowingly.

The attendant removed his pipe. “Your jib upside down, haven’t you?” he remarked, or approximately that, and at any rate he had to say everything three or four times before I found and organized the consonants among his unusual diphthongs.

Well, I knew what those words meant. We hauled the jib down again, undid all the little hooks along its edge, and hooked them up in reverse order. I hauled it high again, and Frederic again tied the end around the metal device we had chosen before. Then we went back to the mainsail ropes.

“Jib halyard belays there,” said the man, pointing with his pipe.

A halyard is a rope, and I know which one. I also know which rope is a painter, a sheet, a pennant, a point. I changed the jib halyard.

“Haul on your topping lift, hadn’t you?”

The topping lift turned out to be one of the other ropes. After he had come aboard and found it for us (while he was at it he helped haul), the boom began to swing freely, though not as heavily as it would when the sail was up.

I said, “Watch out, Gerda,” and my wife said, “Ouch.”

“Stow that cover in the hold,”I said to Fred in a last effort to gain face.

“Topping lift belays here,” said the man.

How I wished never to see this man again. But it was ten more miserable minutes before both sails were flapping briskly in a wind that was now strong, or, at any rate, noisy, and I became aware that our helper was untying us from the dock. “Wait a minute, wait a minute,”said my wife as I raced for the tiller. “Which way are we going?”

“Wind’s coming around to the southwest. Want to go under the bridge?” he said.

“Which way is southwest?” I asked, frantically licking my index finger.

“Hey,” said Gerda, putting her head out through the swinging doors, “did you guys know there’s five plates and five cups and five bowls and five — ”

“No, not under the bridge,” said the rest of us. “Right,” said the man. “Have to tack up as far as the bend, then. Got that tiller?”

We were off, pointing straight across the river. Behind us, I was surprised to notice, came a friend - ly brown rowboat at the end of a four-foot rope.

“And a china coffeepot,”said Gerda, sitting down.

“Can I steer?” asked Frederic.

“Shouldn’t you turn now?” remarked my wife.

Ahead of us a motorboat was tied against a wooden wall. Two feet along in the direction we were planning to go in, an Englishman sat on a lump of iron and fished. “The jib, the jib,”I said. “Somebody get the jib rope. I’m turning, Frederic, get the jib rope. Darling, could you? Coming about.” (“Coming about” is always said.)

I pressed against the tiller and was glad to find my hand had not lost its skill. Two feet from the motorboat, as we all bobbed and moved around the cockpit under the crossing boom, the Perfect Lady turned ponderously and started across the river, her back end missing the motorboat by the same neat two feet.

Our rowboat, however, thudded into the motorboat and then ran along its side in a series of crashes.

“Someone untie that damn rowboat.”

“It’s included in the price, Pop. I asked the man. Shouldn’t you turn?”

“Coming about. Gerda, will you get your head down?”

We pulled around, and the rowboat, behind us, crashed into the wharf we had rested against while we prepared to leave. At least our helper had gone.

“We’re in the same place,” said Gerda, accurately.

“Can I steer?” said Frederic.

“Can I? Can I steer?” said Gerda.

“Coming about.”

This time I started heaving at her as soon as the fisherman came in line with the mast. The rowboat came roaring around, found nothing to crash into, and swung vicious but helpless at the end of its rope (I believe into the fishing line). Now let any Englishman watch me — I had it. As soon as I was fairly turned and sailing, I turned again. It was hot work in spite of the breeze. The next time we came his way, the fisherman turned his rod so that the hook hung right next to the wooden wall, and the time after that he slowly reeled in and sat waiting.

“No one else may steer until we are out of the village,” I said gently. “Coming about.”

At that Gerda went inside. Frederic said, “But you’re not going. We’re still in the same place, Pop.”

“That’s not true,” I said, still gently. “I’m aiming at quite a different part of the wharf this time. Look at that knothole.”

“That guy’s catching up with us.”

Between us and the bridge a small sail had appeared.

“He’s smaller,” I said. I also said, “Coming about.” Then I said in panic, “Who has the right of way? Vessel on the starboard tack, or is it port tack? No, I’m sure it’s the one on the starboard track.”

“Starboard right. Port left,” I added wildly as he turned directly opposite us and we each headed for the middle. But what was the starboard tack? Though the boats were right at each other, I could not believe we would collide. I had never collided with a vessel in my life. I would give way. But how? I pulled the tiller. We missed the front of him and crashed into his stern.

“Sorry,” said the young steersman, recovering and continuing.

Oh, for a library where I could look it up! “Somebody get that guide!” On a starboard tack, would the sail be on the starboard side, or would the wind be, in which case the sail would be on the other, or port, side? Clearly, one or the other.

“Bjorn!” shouted my wife.

“Coming about.” The rowboat smashed into the wall under the fisherman.

“Here he comes again, Pop,” said Frederic, for by now the other boat had turned also. “Shall I go up front and catch him?”

“Good,” I said. “No,” I shouted as the wind blew harder and the boats came faster. I pulled the tiller with all my strength, shouting, “Watch the boom, watch the boom,” as we turned the improper way and our boom smashed across to catch in one of those wires, on the other boat, that reach down from the top of the mast. For thirty seconds wood and wire wrestled, his large sail eager to pull the wire right through our boom, our gigantic one determined to sweep us back to the bridge; then he was loose and off, shouting, “Oh, I say, I am sorry.”But I believe Englishmen say “Sorry” when you hit them just as when giving you something they say “Thank you.”

I pulled into a tack again at a point much closer to the bridge than we had ever been before.

Gerda came out and said, “The coffeepot didn’t break. Can I steer now?”

My shoulders were exhausted. I said, “Let’s tie up and have lunch.”

“I’ll steer a bit if you like,” said my wife.

She took the tiller, directed the nose straight down the river, and we sailed straight down the river. Past the dock, past the fisherman (who said, pointing at Gerda, “That boy’s going to fall in”), past Dun Rovin, slowly but straight. We all knew that the wind had changed, but the children found occasion to laugh a good deal. Well, I like a happy party. We sailed past the last house. Long grass tops waved toward us on the left, ran away from us on the right. In the flat distance were copses of poplars, corn meadows and sheep meadows, a windmill, a stone church tower. Across a meadow to our right a red sail moved with shell-like curved grace.

MOTORBOATS overtook us. Sailboats met us. There was room for all. Then the river bent to make us tack again, and the water ahead seemed full of sails, and it was clearly time for lunch.

My wife, on a tack from left to right, found an even narrower waterway joining the river and sailed into it.

“Now we’ve got a good wind,” she said, pleased.

“I thought we were going to have lunch,” said Gerda.

“Yes, you be looking for a nice place to tie up. Bjorn, how do 1 stop?”

The good wind blowing perpendicularly from our left (port) seemed stronger than it had been, and we were proceeding at possibly ten miles an hour down the strange straight dike (I suppose it was artificial). On the right bank were trees and bushes, on the left open fields and a towing path. At our speed it seemed unwise to crash the full weight of our two-cabin boat into either one.

“Let’s do this calmly,” I said.

“Oh, look, are those blackberries?” said Gerda. “This is a nice place to tie up,”

“The correct method,” I said, “is to turn around to face the wind, let out the sail, and thus head slowly toward the bank the wind is blowing from,”

I said proudly. ”That bank,”I added, pointing to the left. “Frederic, go up front so you can jump off and hold us.”

“We passed the blackberries.”

My wife jiggled the tiller and straightened it out again.

“Are you sure we fit to turn around?” she said.

We sailed on. Gerda continued to point out patches of blackberries. Frederic, hidden up front behind the sails, called to find out if we had planned to stop, and if so, should he come back now? Absorbed in calculation, we did not answer him.

“Oh, I think we’ll fit,” said my suddenly reckless wife. “Let the sails out, you said?”

“Hey,” shouted Frederic, invisible amidships.

There was very little splash, and yet when Frederic’s head became visible again it was behind us, a little to the right, very low down, and was all that was visible of him.

Well, that was how we stopped for lunch. In the excitement my wife let go of both sails and tiller, and when we were once more a whole family unit, and shivering but pleased Frederic was being sent down to his room to change, we found that the Perfect Lady was pushing sideways into the right (but wrong) bank, under the shade of a tall willow. At least this time no one had seen us, except possibly a passing middle-aged bird watcher. My wife hurried to light the gas stove for hot tea while Gerda and I, though the boat seemed to have settled herself, made all shipshape by tying fore and aft and then took in (never say “took down”) and rolled the sails neatly. The unhappy rowboat was sent off (passing a family of swans — very British) to pick blackberries. We brought the table out to the partly sunny, partly willow-shaded cockpit (sun for Frederic, shade for the rest of us) and lunched off hot tinned steak and kidney pudding, tea, tomatoes, and blackberries, with thick brown bread and salty butter. Frederic’s jeans and underwear limply set about drying themselves on the rooftop. When we had eaten, Frederic splashed the dirty plates in the river and gave them to Gerda to rinse in heated water and hand to me where I sat over the stores my wife was repacking and lazily polished each dish with a clean undershirt — inside rim and outside rim, inside each cup handle, fork back to Gerda to have a small portion of pudding removed, forks and spoons and knives, each in its own groove in the box.

“Well. Let’s go,”said Frederic.

“Be calm, be calm, Frederic,” I said, standing to stretch myself and point to at least three other undraped masts belonging to sailors who were lunching across the low pastures and through the trees.

“Three less boats for us to bump into, Pop,”said Frederic.

THE Perfect Lady had forgotten she was against a leeward bank, but by the time we had both sails tight she had remembered and was pressing against it with enthusiasm.

“Rowboat all secure?” I asked. “All right. Cast off stern warp first. That rope,” I explained to Frederic. “Go on shore and untie it. Next,” I said (I couldn’t see that it made any difference, but if I remembered the correct order, we might as well follow it), “the other one, and then jump quickly back on. I have the tiller.”

“Fred,” I said, as our ship continued to pursue the bank exactly as she had when she was tied to it, “perhaps you should jump off again and push a little. Careful not to be left behind.”

Presently I gave the tiller to my wife and got off too. Except that a country inn would not push back, it was very much like pushing a country inn.

“Freddy, you take the tiller,” said my wife. “I’ll try pushing.”

We strained. The Perfect Lady strained. But we were winning. She would move an inch off the bank before rolling back. She was progressing forward!

“Those wires up there are catching in the tree,”said Frederic.

“Get off and help push,” I shouted. “Gerda, take the tiller.”

“Which way do I pull it?” shouted Gerda.

“Just hold it straight, child,” called Frederic. “Heave ho. Yo-ho heave ho.”

“Gerda,” said my panting wife, “hold the rope so the sails don’t flap.”

“For heaven’s sake, Gerda,” I puffed. “You know you have to hold the rope.”

Later, however, I formed the opinion that the rope was better unheld. For the first time I was having the sensation of pushing a boat through water. As the boom not unkindly moved me backward into the bushes, I was sure the boat was off. In fact, when I saw Gerda the next time there was two feet of water between us. Could I jump? Should I run along the bank after her? The sail pushed scratching through lower branch and overhanging bush, while away up aloft there was a twang and a snap — luckily, the wire twanging and the tree snapping. Gerda, clutching the tiller with vigor and staring with a keen eye, shouted, “What rope? What rope do you mean?”, and my wife, appearing beside me on the bank, urged me to jump the now unthinkable distance.

Where was Frederic? Ah, hurray. Up front, with only the little jib to fight, Frederic had made it. As we struggled along the bank after the flapping boat we saw him arrive breathless in the cockpit, haul in on the main rope, seize the tiller from his willing sister, haul on the rope until the sail was taut.

The Perfect Lady gathered speed like a falcon and in two minutes was out of sight along the narrow dike.

My wife began to talk. I don’t remember any comments on my part, except, as we gratefully found a path and panted along it, “Now I know.

I should have told them not to hold the rope.”

“Who cares now?”

We collided with a man, perhaps the bird watcher, who trotted after us saying, “Are you in trouble? Can I help?”, but I hardly heard him, catching my breath to listen for crashing or watercontact sounds ahead. Was that a church tower appearing through the trees? Aha, was that a sail!

Like a falcon she came speeding back, Frederic at the tiller, Gerda manfully hauling on the jib rope.

“Americans, are you?” asked our new acquaintance.

“Stop, stop,”shouted my wife. “Stop.”

“Can’t stop,”yelled Frederic.

“I shouldn’t have thought,” said the man, “those two were old enough to be on their own like that.”

“Frederic,” I said, till my throat hurt, “let go of the ropes. Gerda, let go.”

And there was the Perfect Lady floundering and bumping against our bank. Which was, of course, no matter that the boat was turned around, still the leeward bank.

But one learns, one learns. A time came when the bird watcher had gone back to his birds and we were sailing back toward the main river in a wind which, having had its fun, had subsided. Frederic told how he had been able to turn when the dike had suddenly become much broader. “A Norfolk broad,” exclaimed my wife, and we talked of going back to look at it but did not do so. When we reached the river the weak wind was still against us; furthermore, the current was against us, as it had now begun to flow upstream. I tacked feebly across, ending with just enough strength to make the turn, tacked back, and couldn’t turn. The current, helped by the wind that was too reserved to help us, pushed us against the bank, and when we pushed off with a long pole Frederic found on the deck, these two friends turned us around the wrong way (“jibing”), so that we could not have gone back into the dike if we had wanted to.

“Can 1 steer?” said Frederic.

All up and down the river incompetent sails were drooping. There is no ignominy in not sailing when there is no wind. I gave the tiller to Fred and, leaving my wife to watch him, went below with Gerda and lay down to enjoy the subtle rocking of the boat. Through my small window tops of poplars slowly moved.

“It doesn’t turn, it doesn’t turn,” I heard Frederic say, and then a pleasant bumping. The poplar tops jerked, but not annoyingly. Frederic swore in his eleven-year-old vocabulary, but I napped — perhaps “slept” is a more accurate word.

BJORN,” screamed my wife.

I did, in a sense, wake up.

“Hold on, hold on,” she cried. “Bjorn!”

The poplars — no, other trees — were racing noisily. Had the wind risen? We must reef!

“Turn into the wind,” I shouted, and bumped my head on the roof and myself against hurrying Gerda as I floundered toward the swinging door.

What I now describe as seeing was gone in a second. On the left, huge trees; close beside us on the right, an enormous suave green English garden-party lawn mowed down over the curving bank. The extraordinary wind was going the same way we were; the sail was out on the left and the boat was veering right. My sweating wife and sweating Frederic were pulling at the tiller, which was pulling nobly against them, as I came to the door, shouting, “Turn into the wind.”

“That’s just what it’s trying to do,” she cried.

“I’ll fend off,” shouted Frederic, letting go and racing forward.

“Then haul in the sail,” I cried, leaping, and Gerda leapt to lend a hand, and at that moment we crashed and climbed four feet up onto the grassy sward while thumping crockery slid and scrambled below and someone stepped on my little finger.

The jib sail flapped like thunder. The mainsail struggled to continue. Onward, onward.

Fredcric jumped on shore, jumped up again, collided with me by the ropes, caught the boom as I pulled down the mainsail.

We took in the jib.

“What a pretty lawn,” said Gerda.

“Wasn’t it?” said her sarcastic brother.

I said, “A motorboat is coming. Let’s get off before they see us.”

I now stepped down and pushed at the front of the boat with all my strength. Shortly, my wife joined me. Frederic joined us, and also Gerda. Four feet of solid boat was planted in the pretty lawn (I measured it with my size twelve tennis shoes). We could not together have lifted one end of a Rolls-Royce, and we could not together lift this end of the Perfect Lady or push it off. The motorboat came buzzing along, and a sailboat hove into view.

“Stop pushing,” said Frederic. “Pretend we just parked for a spot of tea.”

“Why don’t we ask them to pull us off?” said my wife.

“No,” said Frederic.

I stopped pushing and looked as idle as I could. My wife said, “I suppose we have to call the boatyard and have them send a derrick.”

“Sure,” said Frederic. “Just trot up to the mansion, old top, and say we’ve ruined their lawn — can we have a spot of telephone?”

The motorboat went by.

“We could leave it here,” I said darkly, “and hitchhike to the nearest channel port.”

“Wait till the sailboat’s gone,” said Frederic.

The sailboat was advancing very little, coming from the direction opposite the one we had come from, across the river and about, across the river and about. “You see,” I pointed out, pleased in spile of our position of ignominy, “everyone has the same problem. He’s only two feet further on than he was last time. She, rather.”

How competent, though dainty, the steerswoman looked in her heavy turtleneck garment, her arm casual over the tiller. On the front of her boat a male companion coiled rope. He was wearing a small sweater and a remarkably old, soggy, stretched-in-the-wrong-places wool bathing suit secured around the waist with a leather belt.

“Better steer clear of this,” he remarked as if we were not there, while we endeavored to look as if they were not there, and Gerda, who pays attention to detail, passed among us with a square tin of digestive biscuits and gingersnaps.

“Right you are,” said the girl. “Ready about.”

The boat approached the bank just under my feet and turned, the man stepping nimbly over the ropes that pull the jib sail to the other side. He stepped over them again as she turned at the other bank. Instantly, so obliquely were we parked, she had to prepare to turn again.

“Watch you don’t scrape her.”

Over the jib ropes and over the jib ropes he hopped as she turned and turned and still had not passed the left rear corner of the Perfect Lady, sticking out into the river. Too embarrassed to look, I wandered along the green sward toward a pair of squabbling swans.

“Got her this time,” said the girl. I turned.

“I think,” she added.

“I’ll fend off,” shouted the man as I heard a familiar bumping. I saw his fingers struggling along our cabin roof as his feet struggled along his own deck. “Blessed wind,” he panted. “Let the sail out a bit.”

Aha! Oh, no! “Watch it!”

Efficiently I raced along the deck of the Perfect Lady to haul out the wretched swimmer. Meanwhile, his lightened boat came easily around our stern and into the bank, where it was caught by Frederic. My wife brought up the drier of our two face towels and started hot water for coffee. Gerda proffered biscuits. Working all together, we assisted the lovely helmswoman to pull down the sails and tie up.

“I’ve never actually sailed a gaff rig before,”she said, barely audibly.

“They probably think we’ve never sailed anything before,” said the young man, coming out of the cabin in wrinkled gray trousers and a dry shirt. “I’m sure they think we’re the most frightful idiots.”

“Not at all, not at all. In fact —”

“Barging around like absolute novices. I say, thanks, here’s your towel. I hope we didn’t mark your stern.”

“I hope we didn’t mark yours.”

“You must be thinking we shouldn’t be allowed out.”

“Oh, sure,” said Frederic. “Look at the mess we’re in.”

And if you are wondering why they hadn’t noticed it themselves, all I can suggest is that it is good manners in England not to pry into the personal situation of others. Now the young man cheered up at once. We all were full of good cheer. The smoldering English beauty stopped sulking and came ashore, eager to help. It developed that they, in a similar situation earlier, had shoved her stern around with the quant, which, though it cut a new three-sided chink off the lawn, got us away. We sailed apart on jolly terms, and on the following Wednesday night, chancing to tie up near each other across from the Swan Inn at Horning, we were jolly together again.

The Perfect Lady dented other banks that week — a wheat field and a towing path (if we lived along those banks, we might join a neighborhood antiyachtsman society). At night we tied up under a willow, or to a wharf, or anchored in the middle of a broad, and then wandered through black English lanes or read in our comfortable beds (the battery-run bedside lights twinkling each night a little less bright). In the morning Frederic and Gerda would row to a waterside shop for the breakfast milk. Frederic and I, rowing around a broad one evening, saw a young man beating a retriever in the reeds and heard an English lady, flushed from her half-hidden tent by this outrage, calling him bloody. One afternoon there was no wind at all, and we spent the afternoon looking for it, pushing ourselves along the muddy bottom with the ten-foot pole that charming young Englishman had called a quant. Except for one cozy night it never rained enough to mention; English rain has, at any rate, a fresh, unobtrusive flavor. Frederic was given the tiller. Gerda was given the tiller. Frederic was given charge of the boat. We fell in again (my wife, this time, in three feet of water and mud she says had no measure). We never did break the coffeepot. We came up to several windward banks in beautiful slow motion, and we came up to other windward banks with a heavy crash. We collided with other boaters, but it wasn’t always our fault. Englishmen on vacation don’t sail that much better than we do.