Remember our honeymoon to Scotland, Tanzania and Kenya? We ended up on a little island, Lamu, off the coast of Kenya where Lynn’s best friend Alice was able to convince 40 people to fly half-way around the world to celebrate her 30th and her mom’s 60th birthdays. Alice is the quintessential jet-setter; partly because of her love for travel and people and partly because she was born and bred to experience the world in ways that few people can imagine. She was born into one of the most famous families in England, and then moved to Africa where her sister was born. She immigrated to America when she was 13 and met Lynn who had just emigrated from Scotland at the same age. They bonded forever when they both professed their love of the British singer Kylie Minogue.
Alice has friends and relatives all over the world, and is most likely visiting one at any given time, so Lynn and I have made it a priority to “see what Alice is doing” before making any concrete travel plans. We called her a month or so ago and told her we were heading back to Uganda for a month and that we should try to get together, as she is currently living and working next door in Tanzania. She informed us that she was actually going to be back home in England with her mother to attend the annual Dartmouth Regatta, which was the same week that we would be flying through London on our way to Uganda…shocking! Well, we could not pass up a chance to hang out with Alice and her mom Sally so we finagled a few extra days, rented a car, drove across southern England to Dittisham and joined two other friends of Alice who have also taken up the practice of scheduling their vacations based on “what Alice is doing.” Oh yeah, one more thing, Alice pretty much flies by the seat of her pants so one can always expect some kind of wacky mishap, which makes our time with her all that more adventurous and fun.
Dittisham, about a mile and a half up the Dartmouth River from the sea, is the definition of a hamlet with its rolling green hills and hedged roads (that rarely allow two cars to pass each other side by side) giving way to the waterside village that boasts two bars, two restaurants and an 800 year old church still in use. With a population of about 500, everything one does in the village is common knowledge within a couple of hours (e.g. I met a woman on the third day who said, “Oh you’re the one who eats like a horse”).
Alice’s family owns seven boats, all small 12-15 foot whalers or sailboats, as well as their 35’ regatta racing boat called ‘Rocket.’ Alice took us sailing in her favorite boat named after her grandmother Dillis. The winds can be very unpredictable in Dittisham and in Dartmouth at the mouth of the river. Also, the river Dart is a tidal river so the currents and tides can be extremely strong and difficult to deal with in a small sailboat. Because of this, Dillis comes equipped with two oars and a tiny Yamaha outboard engine. The regatta is a huge event that turns the little town of Dartmouth into one giant weeklong festival with rowing races, carnival rides, good food, lots of drinking and one very odd Native American, electronic flute band trying to sell CD’s to a bunch of fascinated Brits.
After much debate over which boat we would be able to use on Friday to head downriver to the festival, it was settled that we would use Dillis. Six of us jumped into Dillis and we motored, with the current, down to Dartmouth where, because there appears to be no boating protocol during the festival, we decided to tie up to a garbage barge to get out of the mayhem and watch some rowing races. It turned out to be a great place to chill for awhile. Next, we headed to the mouth of the river to get some pictures of the 16th century castle built to defend against the dreaded Spanish Armada. After tooling around near the castle for a while, we decided to go out to sea just a bit to catch a glimpse of the big regatta boats racing. It started to get a little choppy so we turned around a speed limit marker and right away realized that while our tiny Yamaha outboard engine was quite adept at motoring us downriver with the tide and current, it was going to be a whole different story trying to get back. This feeling was crystallized by the fact that the speed limit marker that we turned on was still right next to us about a minute after we turned it and the 10 knot current made it look like the marker was sitting in a whitewater rapid. Just as we all became quite alarmed by that fact, our engine slowly started to lose what little power it already had. We started to think light and aerodynamic while we puttered up river wondering what we were going to do, as we were pretty sure by now that the engine was surely going to die. We luckily made it back to the mooring buoys and were able to grab hold of one and tie up. We shut off the engine “to give it a rest;”
Alice and I took the engine cover off and proceeded to stare at all the different parts hoping that staring and resting would cure the engine of its woes. After a five minute rest, Alice fired her up and she sounded a little better, but she was not in gear yet. A brief miscommunication lead Angela to let go of our mooring rope just as Alice put the engine in gear, which subsequently killed it again. Now we were untied, in a 6-7 knot current with a dead engine. It became a bit chaotic as we whipped out the oars and started rowing against the current (luckily Angela and Rita rowed in college and Lynn was calm as usual as she helped row). We somehow managed to make it over to the last mooring before the castle and the open sea where we were able to tie up again and collect our thoughts. As we settled and looked around us, we laughingly realized that we had indeed captured the “last buoy before France,” and so added another story to our long list of wacky adventures with Alice.
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