Rally Report by Peter Manning

The second of this year's four rallies was held at Bradwell-on-Sea over the weekend of 12 & 13 July 2008. 33 members planned to come to the rally, some for the first time. One of our members, Riks Finke, was hoping to come in his boat from Holland but was unable to set out due to strong winds. Perhaps the weather will be kinder next year Riks.

Four boats did make it to the rally. Tim Metcalfe in his 26' Kingfisher CHOPSTICKS, and Bob Ager in his Liberty 22 ORLANDO with a brand new junk sail replacing the old Liberty rig. Robin Blain kindly trailed his 26' MacGregor BUNNY all the way from Dorset and Patrick Smith brought his Colvic 25 FUSTILUG from Brightlingsea.

Saturday dawned with the wind still blowing quite strongly but happily during the day it gradually subsided. Members duly arrived and after having lunch in the Bradwell Marina Bar were allocated to the boats.

The afternoon was spent sailing on the Blackwater in quite brisk winds which meant that initially the boats were quite heavily reefed but as the wind dropped so full sail was raised and members spent the rest of the afternoon enjoying the company and sailing with owners on their boats.

In the evening we retired to the Bradwell Quay Yacht Club for dinner. This year we were without our usual cook Marie Folkard who, after 15 years at Steward at the club, had decided change was due and had moved over to the Bradwell Marina Bar.

We were offered the chance of a barbecue by Elaine and her husband Jason who are the events organisers for the club and we feasted on an excellent barbecue prepared by them.

Having eaten almost to capacity on the barbecue, Elaine produced a pavlova filled full of strawberries which members thoroughly enjoyed. An excellent barbecue, thank you Elaine and Jason.

We were hoping that Alan Mayne could repeat his most interesting talk on canal-boating given at Plymouth, but unfortunately he was unable to attend. Instead he kindly allowed Robin Blain, assisted by Peter Manning, to deliver his talk.

On Sunday we sailed in Company to Brightlingsea for lunch at the Colne Yacht Club. Although we had sufficient boats for everyone to sail to Brightlingsea, two of the boats are kept there and would not normally return to Bradwell. We were very grateful to Tim Metcalfe who very kindly agreed to make the return journey so everyone managed to get back to Bradwell by sea. Thank you Tim.

Although we managed to sail to Brightlingsea, by the time we had finished lunch, the wind had almost died away and we had to motor some of the way back to Bradwell.

After saying our farewells, those remaining assisted Robin to recover BUNNY ready for her journey back home and afterwards retired to a local restaurant, The Green Man, for dinner.

This rally report and related photos have been taken
from the Junk Rig Association Newsletter 51.