Free Fight For Your Dream by Elaine Hazel Sharp Page B

for an early departure the following day from Brancaster to Hull. Nigel made all the relevant engine checks, oil, fuel, coolant and fuel reserves, and all was in working order. I’d prepared cheese sandwiches the night before as, with such an early start the following morning, I didn’t want the added bother of making sandwiches. I would have enough jobs to do.
    When we turned into bed that night I wondered what tomorrow would bring. Calm seas and light winds would be welcome, but I knew that was not going to happen. Sleeping was difficult. We were both restless and we tossed and turned whilst listening to the wind blowing in the rigging. When I eventually did find sleep, I dreamed of the sail home. Phew, I was tired already!
    We were both awake before the alarm clock started to ring. No doubt Nigel was as apprehensive as I was. However, we both kept our thoughts to ourselves, and got on with the job in hand. After pulling on our foul weather gear, we opened up the hatch, and stepped up to the cockpit. ‘Flipping heck, Bun, the wind’s blowing hard. It must be 25 knots’. Actually, when Nigel took the cover off the instruments, the wind speed was showing 32 knots! It didn’t really fill me with confidence, seeing the look of shock on Nigel’s face. He was usually so calm: but not today! Shielding his face with his hand, he turned towards me and said, ‘We’ve just got to get home, love. I need to get back to work. We’ve been here ages, and we just need to get home.’ So, with that, I resigned myself to the fact that we were going no matter what, and I would just have to get on with it. Nigel instructed me to clip my life line onto a jackstay, before heading up forward to slip the mooring lines attached to the buoy. I did so without hesitation, as I didn’t fancy a man overboard drill today!
    As we headed out into open water, I can remember feeling a sense of panic. If it was this bad now, here, what would it be like three miles offshore? I shuddered at the thought of it. Nigel asked me to take the helm, whilst he went up front to set the sail. In all our years of sailing we’d never had to set the storm jib before, but he did this day. This was another first, and one which unnerved me even more.
    Two hours into our journey, and we were committed. Even if we had decided to turn back to safety, because the tide was going out we wouldn’t have had sufficient depth of water to do so. No, we had no option but to continue onwards to the mouth of the Humber. Both of us were feeling ill. Nigel had taken some anti-seasickness tablets, as sometimes he had the tendency to be sick. Fortunately for me, I didn’t really suffer from sea sickness... that was until today. I had never experienced such foul weather before this trip: and not since, either. The seas were huge. Green water hurtled down our side decks with such incredible force. Our fixed windscreen did little to shield us from the relentless pounding of the waves, and both of us found ourselves gripping onto anything we could get hold of, to prevent being thrown around the cockpit. ‘Good God,’ I thought, ‘it’s more like white water rafting than sailing.’ Poor Nigel: he was being horrendously sick but, to make matters worse, the anti-seasickness tablets he’d taken had a side effect of making one drowsy. I was horrified to find him falling asleep. ‘Please bun, Nigel,’ I yelled, ‘please stay awake. Please don’t leave me on my own. Please, bun, I need you to stay awake.’
    His answer was simply, ‘I want to get off.’ My reply was, simply, ‘So do I, but we can’t. We’ve just got to hang on, and get through this together.’
    For the first time in my life, I can honestly say I feared for my life!
    I had to do something constructive: something worthwhile. I took the decision to radio through to the coastguard. Channel sixteen is the emergency channel