Blue Moon's trip around the UK

I have wanted to visit New Quay in Wales ever since I saw a SuperSeal for sale there. (Explanation from Narnia: the SuperSeal was an early incarnation of what became the range of boats that is now Parkers and Seals, they changed the name to Parker but kept the seal logo, all v confusing). I had never heard of the place, assumed it was the one in Cornwal spelled wrong, but no, there is a New Quay in West Wales and there were pictures of a SuperSeal sitting on a beach in what appeared to be a totally open bay. It was sold before I worked out how to get to New Quay from London (I suspect one of the attractactions of the place is that you can’t) but my interest was piqued at such a strange harbour. A few years later we watched Ruth Jones’ ‘Who do you think you are?’ and she went there to see where her great great grandfather the sea captain lived and it looked absolutlely picture postcard gorgeous.

Now I’ve been, and it is, and I went in my own boat (not the SuperSeal, which came from even further away in North Wales), and I anchored off the tiny harbour which is really just half a wall around a beach and pulled the keel up and ate my lunch and enjoyed the spectacle of observing (and listening to) the happy sound of bank holidaymakers enjoying a warm afternoon. I’d read up on New Quay and knew that you could only stay here in winds from the south as it is so exposed, and amazingly that was what was promised overnight – getting up to about Force 4 so that should be OK as long as I was close enough in. So as the tide receded, and people started walking rather than paddling around the boat, I jumped into the dinghy and rowed ashore (they were walking up to their waists and screaming and giggling with the cold) with the happy expectation of a large ice cream, a stroll around the lovely village and a helping of Wales’ finest fish and chips (according to many sources). But before that I had to see the SuperSeals on the beach – I had counted six of them, including their sister ship the Parker 27, more than I had seen at any one sailing club, lined up on the beach like giant Hobie Cats. And after my recent social experiences I knew that if I didn’t go and say hello I would be considered rude and, well, a Londoner.

So I walked to the nearest and found a group of jolly sailors standing around it. “Hello,” I said, “I’ve got a boat like yours, she’s anchored over there.” “Yes,” they said, “we saw you. We’ve all got boats like yours except Frank* here, but he’s got two called Blue Moon. Now take this rope and go over there and help us pull this mast up.”

Now on the South Coast you put the mast up on a boat like this by paying lots of money to a man with a crane. But in New Quay you get your friends around, wait for a hapless bloke to wander by and get him to pull on a long piece of rope while someone else pokes the other end with a big stick and everyone shouts very cheerfully and the mast waves around terrifyingly and suddenly it’s up. Like this:

It was all very jolly and made the turning up in the right boat thing all the more fun. Then I looked at the weather forecast – the advertised Force 4 had just been upgraded to a Force 6. I floated the notion past my new friends that New Quay might not be the best place to be in a F6 from any direction unless your boat was right up the beach tied onto some big chains. They agreed.

So it was with a very heavy heart that I walked past Wales’ best fish and chips (second best, my locals informed me) to their recommended ice cream parlour where I spent the price of fish and chips in Kentish Town on a double Milky Bar Mash-up with Crunchie topping and went back to the boat, deflated the dinghy and hightailed it for Aberystwyth two hours away where there is a secure marina that laughs at F6 from any direction.

*Frank may not have been his name. I was still a bit too flabbergasted at the press-ganging to be paying attention. They were all lovely people so they won’t mind.

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