Diary

Cooking On The Norfolk Broads

Or

How To make Dinner without Blowing The Bloody Boat Up.

A complete guide on cooking on a small boat

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Tuesday June 29

Breakfast
Lunch – Lion – Thurne Dyke
Dinner – Leftovers, tomato Soup, Yorkshire Pudding

A lovely sail down the river Ant in the morning. Now the Ant is a vary narrow river, less than twenty feet in some places, but our boat is thirty-five feet long. Tacking a boat this size down such a small river is a challenge at best, and it wasn’t long before we had about dozen boats waiting patiently behind us. It used to be that hire boats were driven by drunk idiots, on this trip we found the opposite to be true. The only problems we had were with private boats.

When sailing your are at the mercy of the wind, and when possible a yacht skipper will give directions to other boats about where they should go, or when it’s safe to pass. We were closed hauled going down the Ant at a good speed – about 5 knots with a very brisk breeze, in front of me was a large private cruiser who, unless he stopped, was about to become an ornament on the front of my bowsprit. The crew and I gave him directions to just hold where he was. His reply was to tell me where he thought I should go. Well I couldn’t change course even if I had wanted to, this was going to be a very expensive game of chicken. But by some miracle I missed his boat, and to this day I don’t know why we didn’t end up with one of his fenders in our well.

As it was our last day we decided to try and make for Coltishall, one of the prettiest villages on the Broads. At the end of the navigation are two pubs, the Rising Sun and the Kings Head. I was expecting all of the moorings to be full, but I noticed that at the pubs moorings there were two Yachts already moored and space for our boat – just.

As we got closer I recognized one of the Yachts as “Dragon Fly” that we had seen at the Coldham Hall Yacht club. She is a beautiful Broads yacht. So I took great care when mooring not to bang against her, even though know one appeared to be on board.

After checking out the village and the pubs we ended up in the Kings Head. The Rising Sun, which used to be one of the finer boozers on the Broads has now turned in to a very unfriendly, poor food, hate kids, give us your money place.

As we were going back to our boat for our final meal on the water we noticed that the crew of “Dragon Fly” had returned and we struck up a conversation. Lovely people, who had been watching my every move while I was mooring up! We were invited on board and given a tour of this classic Broads Racing Yacht, built in 1905, and built to survive another hundred years.

Comments

From - LizzieT Posted On 10 Oct 2004

My dad (Richard T) is a really good chef even though he almost set fire to our kicthen when he was trying to mke yorkshore pudding.

From - roy abrahams Posted On 20 Aug 2004

hallo out there just a quick comment i moved to norfolk in 1969 just to be near the broads and my wife and i will be having our 52nd holiday on the broads this xmas our 4th xmas on a boat its just brill its just a shame to see so many boat yards closing many of them old friends over the years if you have took the time to read this thank you and keep on boating

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