It was Cowes Week on the Isle of Wight off the coast of Southern England, the place was buzzing with yachties from all over the world. The bay was full of the latest and biggest racing yachts of the 1970’s, the Britannia with Prince Charles on board was anchored next to us, we were on the 140 ft Baltic trader we had been living on for several months. She was a great sight anchored among the modern yachts, a three masted, topsail schooner built in 1942 in Denmark for the Icelandic trade.

She had two sets of yards to scare the living daylights out of you every time you went about…..it took twenty minutes on a good day, no winches just blocks and brute force. I now understand why there are so many wrecks around the British coast.

It was after dinner and the young crew members we had taken onboard at Milfordhaven were still not back after their day off.

Where are the boys?

We all knew that they would be ashore having a few beers like all sailors, but these guys were still in their teens and not the hardened seamen they maybe thought they were.

A team was dispatched ashore to comb the bars and pubs. Eventually they were found in an extremely inebriated condition, not at all sure who any of us were or where they were on earth.

With a man on either side of each of them to keep them relatively upright, the boys were maneuvered down the beautiful cobbled street to the long wooden jetty our old clinker built dinghy was tied up to.

They were left lying on the jetty while we all got in to the dinghy. Each of them was then rolled into the bottom of the boat where they stayed, unmoving while we rowed back out to the ship. Thankfully it was a calm although chilly evening.

A comatose person lying in the bottom of a dinghy is amazingly heavy and floppy, the only way up onto the deck of the ship was via a rope ladder, an impossibly high rope ladder. We clearly now had a problem.

The only way to get the boys on board was to swing out one of the yards, drop a halyard with a harness on the end of it down to the dinghy and one at a time haul them up to the deck – remember, no winches.

As you can imagine this took a fair while, especially when we were also dealing with a very cross captain.

We finally got the pair of them on deck and the captain immediately instructed that they were to be tied to the forward mast – one facing forward and one facing aft and they were to be left there until morning.

I don’t think I was the only one who crept on deck to make sure they were alright in the middle of the night.

Anyway, morning finally came – six o’clock to be precise. The captain had the two boys untied and sent them straight up onto the yards to do some repairs. OMG I thought, they will be feeling like death, the mean old bugger.

He went down below and enjoyed a leisurely breakfast before finally coming back on deck. After watching them for a little while and criticizing the repairs they were doing he told them to come down and go to bed for the day.

I thought they were going to cry they were so relieved.