Sailing Camp September 2006.
Bawdsey
The Summer season was nearing an end, but the 3rd Sudbury Sea Scouts have time for one more sailing camp. Camping on the grounds of Bawdsey Manor (International School) and using the Bawdsey Quay Water Sports Centre for our sailing program. Nick Powell, a newly qualified RYA Dinghy Instructor and helper at Sea Scouts, took on the job of organizing the camp, along with the help of former Sea Scout Tom Duncan. Fourteen Sea Scouts, with a team of leaders nearly the same size, left the Sudbury Scouts Headquarters just after 19.00 hrs on the 1st September and headed over to Bawdsey, nr Woodbridge. Once we arrived the Sea Scouts quickly set up the camp site and leaders made a start on rigging the sailing dinghies. Before turning in for the night, Nick told everyone where the toilets and showers were and also a short talk on site safety. Leaders had dinner from the pub and a cold beer before they called it a day!
Saturday morning everyone was up and about early. Things happen pretty quick on Sea Scout camps, things like breakfast, lunch, cleaning up dishes and getting washed and ready to go afloat all happen at the same time as leaders put the finishing touches to the sailing dinghies and launch the safety boats. One of the first jobs for the safety boat crews was to run a team over to Felixstowe Ferry to collect the 2 Suffolk county wayfarers and return them to Bawdsey beach. Aiming for a 10.00 am start we had all 5 sailing dinghies on the beach, Nick made time for a briefing of both sailing and safety boat crews. The weather forecast was for winds of force 5-6 and building up in the afternoon ! With that in mind he made a decision to sail in the River and not to head out to sea like we had first planned . After the briefing Nick took on the role as officer of the day and left Alisdair in charge as beach master before joining Nick Pitts on the Groups safety boat ‘Johnny Rescue’ Other safety boats that were on duty that day were: one small rib on loan from Bawdsey Quay Water Sports and one owned by Jeff & Tracy, friends and helpers of 3rd Sudbury Sea Scouts that goes by the name of Rib TC. We also had two other instructors helping on the Saturday.
All sailing boats left the beach and sailed up river, out of the Felixstowe ferry moorings and heading round to Ramsholt. From there we ran a good sailing session with sea scouts doing much of the sailing ! Before long it was time for lunch and time to start making our way back to Bawdsey . As we got closer, we started to experience challenging conditions and a decision was made to ask all sailing dinghies to pick up moorings. This proved to be more of a task then first thought, after a bit of a battle all boats and scouts were safely on the beach . Cold & wet, but thoroughly excited . After lunch and a chance to change out of their wet cloths, they were ready to go again! In the afternoon we were joined by two more people; RYA coach - Mark Orin and senior instructor Alan Rutterford. The plan was to run the afternoon session in a similar way to the morning session, with the only difference being that one of the other instructor’s was being assessed The weather had got worse over lunch , the wind had increased as predicted, but everyone was up for it so we set sail just after 14.00hrs. Within minutes of the start of the session we had 2 dinghies stuck on a lee shore making a recovery quite difficult. The safety boat crews worked hard and successfully recovered the dinghies. But at the end of the day the elements got too much, we brought the session to an end, hoping that tomorrow would be a better day! That evening we had a BBQ at the sailing centre and exchanged tales of the day.
Sunday morning, after a hot breakfast and discussing the up to date weather forecast for the day, we made a decision to sail, again in the river . We towed the boats up river to the end of the moorings with the safety boats, once all boats were happily on the moorings , we released the boats one at a time. We had four out of five Dinghies sailing. Tom Duncan the helm of the Sudbury Wanderer broached taking on a boat full of water, moments later they were on the mud! Not a problem, Johnny Rescue was on to it. It was recovered and taken to a mooring. It was during the bailing out of the Wanderer, that Rib TC called on the radio say that we had a dinghy with a broken mast! It turned out that Explorer, one of Bawdsey Quay’s Wayfarers had snapped a shroud . The mast lent over on the starboard side and bent over in the Tabernacle before jamming at 45 degrees. It would appear that it was not going to be our weekend, and after the news of a broken mast we made a decision to end the session. We asked all helms to get their boats back on moorings. The sea scouts were then taken back by safety boat to the beach. Safety boat crews returned to the sailing dinghies and towed them back too. A great weekend was had by all, Sea Scouts and Leaders were tested for the whole weekend. We all worked well as a team and on more than one occasion put into action what we had be taught on our RYA training courses .Lets just hope that next years sailing program is less eventful . Many thanks to everyone to helped make this camp possible, without your continued support we would not be able to run these type of activities at Sea Scouts.
Thank you, Rob Palmer.
