More Anarchy from the UK

The sea breeze hung over the mouth of the river like a pair of knickers stretched between a stripper's ankles, and like a group of ageing lechers we falter forward, keen to be first to thrust fivers in her garter . . .

Since parting company with my little heartbreaker Fugu I've been acting like a newly divorced man, chasing every bit of skirt in town. A couple of weeks ago I was temporarily elevated to the aristocracy on Anthem in the Fastnet, (a bit like shagging a countess) and this week it's back to a more familiar world, Burnham-on-Crouch for a bit of Burnham Week on my chum Russell Smith's Zipper. She's a David Thomas quarter tonner, and was the designer's own boat, built by the famous Elephant Boatyard on the Hamble. One of her sister ships Needlework still does well on the Solent, and Zipper is a bit of a giant killer herself, more port-and-lemon than champagne but still a really grand girl to spend a day with.

South Coast sailors like to refer to the Crouch as the arsehole of England, and to Burnham as being eight miles up it. They're only jealous of course, but you can see what they're getting at. It's a low-lying estuarial landscape, unindustrialized and in parts rather bleak. The place names carry something of the spirit of the place: at the southern mouth of the River Crouch is Foulness Island, islanded by the River Roach: to the north is the Dengie Peninsula, bounded on the far side by the River Blackwater. There's plenty of mud, and it is so sticky that they export it to toughen up four-wheel drive assault courses. One cartographer at least appreciates the place, and the local road map marks the Royal Artillery's Foulness firing range with the red-letter warning "ANGER ZONE", rather than "DANGER ZONE". It is indeed a landscape to rage in: unlike Dylan Thomas's Llareggub, it's the sort of place where gulls go to be angry rather than lonely. I love it here.

Burnham Week used to be second only to Cowes Week in the national schedule, but as race boats have got bigger and faster it's become more of a local regatta and is none the worse for that. There are four good sailing clubs and a clutch of successful marine businesses. Musto's headquarters are nearby and Nigel M. races his Ker 9M and coaches the kids at the Royal Corinthian. Petticrows, owned by multiple Olympian Poul-Richard Hoj-Jensen, make the world's fastest Dragons and Etchells, and Luca Devoti, "poeta della vela", Finn silver medallist at Sydney (no one who saw him bouncing up to collect the medal will ever forget it) makes very top Optimists, 420s and Finns.

Russell himself is part of Pro-Boat, who distribute those lovely shiny trinkets made by Wichard, and has sailed in Burnham for longer than he'd like to remember, owning various tonners and half tonners. He also did a very different Fastnet to mine, in 1979: he was on Trophy which was repeatedly rolled and lost 3 crew members. He's won most of the local prizes at one time or another, but never the Fairlie cup, which we were up for on the day I joined him, with Martin and Wendy, Cadet ace Jack, and my son Ben. It was typical Burnham Week weather and a typical Burnham Week course: a light westerly gradient wind with sunshine promising a contradictory sea-breeze, an offwind start down to a skinny triangle and sausage out by the Anger Zone, and an ebb tide for most of the day.

Ah yes, tides. There's a place up the crouch called Canewdon, where King Canute famously couldn't stop them, and ever since then Burnham sailors have been obsessed by the subject. The contrarian can do very well sometimes by ignoring them in favor of keeping your eyes open, and Russell did this by being one of only two boats to use the huge line-bias and start in clean air, while the rest fucked each other about along the south bank looking for deeper water.

Although among the lowest rated, we were streets ahead down the first leg in a breakaway with the little Beneteau Harvest Moon. The first tactical decision was when to tell Pelorus, the First 36.7, that they'd missed a leaving mark: we decided that a mile down tide was enough before whispering the news across the hundred yard gap between us. Frank Curtis's J105 Jump the Gun came muscling through, with a Laser SB3, but they owed us several weeks on handicap, so we had no worries there. Zipper's magic kite pulled us away from Harvest Moon, we got to the stripper's pants first, and kept the old girl going all the way round the track, to head off back up the river towards the band of death, where the thermals meet the gradient.

We'd entered gloat territory by now, since we appeared to have beaten everyone in sight, but as ever this proved to be bad karma, and more than a bit previous. We arrived at the shortened line in an extraordinary gaggle of other classes: Dragons, Broads One-Designs, Squibs and Sandhoppers. And bringing the breeze up from behind was the rest of our fleet, including, fatally, the ravishingly beautiful thousand year old West Solent One Design Blackadder, who was absolutely loving the light day. When the Great Burnham Week Abacus finally produced the three puffs of smoke that come with corrected times, (believe me, nothing is slower than the Burnham Week results) Russell still hadn't won the Fairlie, losing it by eight seconds to Blackadder.

I weigh something like 230 pounds and although I don't have her VPPs to hand, what's the betting that carrying that much weight around a fifteen mile course would cost her, say, nine seconds?

Mr. T. claims to actually like tales of everyday sailing told by Joe six-pack types. I'm a bit more Basil Pint-of-Best-and-a-bag-of-pork-scratchins, but I'm certainly an everyday, talent-free, success-poor sort of sailor. I in turn like his idea of having an occasional column called "Anarchy in the UK", so if you get any more of these ramblings don't blame me: it's all his fault.

Fugu