Chapter 12 Stand By to Repel Boarders
There is always a copy of `Riddle of the Sands` in the packed bookshelf on Shoal Waters. Just before midnight on the 28th of July1977, I crouched against the starboard bulkhead at the after end of the cabin. My thoughts flitted from the book with its tense account of Carruthers`s encounter with a nocturnal intruder to the bearded figure passing slowly towards me in an inflatable dinghy. I t was hardly believable, almost a dream or even a nightmare, but in a few moments I would know if I was going to have an intruder of my own. Sure enough, I felt the slight thud as he came alongside port side forward and grasped the gunwale. It was the side away from the shore and the inquisitive searchight of the Porchester Sailing Club on whose moorings I was laying. My heart jumped for a second and then settled down. After all this was no worse than many of the adventures that Shoal Waters and I had encountered over the previous fourteen years and twentyone thousand miles of cruising together. I long ago lost count of the sailing tips that I have picked up from Erskin Childers` grand novel. Now I recalled how Carruthers had accidentally knocked over the cabin lamp and startled the visitor so he never got to grips with him I wanted this chap wormed, parcelled and served, ready to hand over to the police, and sat as quiet as a mouse with a Sestrel hand bearing compass ready but hidden under my right knee to conceal the luminous glow from the betalight cell.
The tiny vessel curtsied as ‘Herr Grimm’ (his real name is unpronounceable), clambered on board. He seemed to fiddle about for a long time near the mast. I realised that he was securing the dinghy to the shrouds so that it was not visible from the shore as it would have been if tied astern in the normal fashion. Every sound echoed through the boat in the silence of the warm summer night. The boom tent covers the cockpit, reaching forward of the sliding hatch and is fastened to the toe rail each side. This restricts movement for anyone outside the tent to careful toe-holds and a firm gip on the boom under the peak of the tent. Slowly he squeezed into the after end of the cockpit without untying the tent at all, a thing I have never attempted. Suddenly he was actually in the cockpit, less than six feet from me.
Only the previous week at the office we had discussed the question of tackling intruders in our home and whether we would have the nerve and determination to have a go, if and when the time came. `Herr Grimm` might be a tough customer and I might come off worse but I had the advantage of surprise and hoped that the compass would make up for my typical flabby fifty year old, office worker, physique. Furthermore, a barge horn near at hand would alert Peter, the local auxiliary coastguard who lives in a houseboat on the foreshore to phone the police right away. ‘Herr Grimm’ seemed satisfied that all was as he had left it the previous night, the top washboard out and the hatch moved forward just a little. I guessed that he had had to leave in a hurry to get away before the tide left him high and dry for Shoal Waters only floated for three or four hours and the tides were only just moving into darkness. Suddenly his bearded face came into view. I could see him clearly as my eyes were used to the faint light inside the cabin. The red glow from Portsmouth harbour gave him a fearsome appearance as he blinked his way into the deep gloom of the tiny cabin. Our faces couldn’t have been more than twelve or fifteen inches apart. He moved so slowly. It was a mystery to me that he didn’t lift out the bottom washboard. He must see or sense me at any moment. I dare not leave it any longer and swung the compass as best I could in the camped cabin and added a flick wrist action as I brought it down hard on his head just above the hairline. He gave a scream rather like the `EEEEEEEEK` balloons of strip cartoons and reeled back. As I leaped to follow, I called out.
“Grab him Bill!” to give the impression that I was not alone. Getting out over the bottom washboard delayed me a second or two and although I grabbed him before he got to the stern, he had recovered from his surprise and in the struggle in which he lost his glasses, pressed a hand into my face, one finger touched my eyeball and stalled me for a moment. In a flash his head and shoulders were under the boom crutch and over the transom, leaving me just a waving mass of legs to tackle. Then he was gone. I untied the cover, blew as hard as I could on the barge horn and waved the compass over his head as he hung onto the stern. He got the message, let go and trod water for some moments seemingly bewildered by the sudden rush of events.
Peter appeared on the shore with his spotlight and said that the police were on their way. I cannot think how he did it so quickly. I got my one oar which I used for occasional sculling, indicated the shore and used his dinghy to follow him as he did a steady breast stroke with my oar waving above his head. Then he was able to stand and wade slowly through the deep mud. I watched warily in case he turned to capsize the dinghy but there was little fight left in him.
“Good Heavens! Cried Peter as ‘Herr Grimm’ came within range of his spotlight, “I recognise this young man”.
“I was hungry” he replied and for a moment I had a pang of sympathy for him.
Apparently he was a German who had arrived in the area about ten days ago in a smart white steel centreboard yacht which was now moored about three hundred yards above the club hard close to the sea wall. He seemed subdued enough once on the foreshore, almost a pathetic figure, as the water dripped out of his clothes. We walked towards his boat where he wanted to go aboard and change. Peter was inclined to let him but I said no, preferring to let the police be the first on board. Two constables arrived with a charming young policewoman with a midland accent.
I briefly explained the history of the incident, my arrival just before dusk a day earlier than expected to find Shoal Waters apparently safe and sound on the mooring where she had rested since the Jubilee Fleet review, ready to watch Cowes Week. Peter lent me a dinghy to get out to her, suggesting that I left it on the mooring when I sailed to pick up my family at Gosport on Friday evening. I clambered aboard to find that the lock had been broken, the top washboard has been removed and the bunk board lifted to reveal the bilge. The tackle had been unhooked from the centreboard and the line from the board tied to the mast support. The significance of this was not apparent until later. Most of my tinned food had gone together with tea, coffee and biscuits. A rubber waterproof torch and a clasp knife were missing but the radio and the compass were still there although the latter had been unbolted. I had a hunch that he would be back. It was no use leaving the dinghy astern so I paddled Shoal Waters back to the shore to leave the dinghy and returned to the mooring to wait. Peter suggested that I sounded the barge horn if anyone turned up. We had expected youngsters from seaward but in fact ‘Herr Grimm’ appeared from the landward side at 2315 hrs just after the majority of the shore lights went out.
The police needed the rubber duck to get to his boat and when I came to paddle it round with his gear I realised that he was using standard dinghy oars instead of paddles, a sure sign that it had been stolen. While he changed into dry clothing, they searched the boat and found most of my gear but of course it had to be kept as evidence. Then they took him off and the young lady came on board Peter’s houseboat to make my statement over a cup of tea.
By 0200 hrs I was back on board well pleased with the night’s sport and changing into my pyjamas but still mystified at the tampering with the centreboard. It never occurred to me that he was trying to STEAL THE PLATE!. My foot touched the centreboard bolt or at least where it should have been, and water started to spurt into the cabin. He had taken out the bolt and replaced it with a paper plug each side. The hull is a Fairey Marine Falcon and the bolt merely supports a large stainless steel washer, which is jammed between the sides of the case. Thus although the bolt had been removed, the plate didn’t drop out. In a few moments I had her on the hard to dry out for the rest of the night. My thoughts reeled at what might have happened. On my last visit with my wife and teenage son, we had clambered on board in the dark and gone straight off to Chichester harbour to watch the last day of the ladies world dinghy championship. What a disaster that could have been if the paper plugs had held out just long enough to get us out to sea! I began to wish that I had hit him a lot harder.
At first light I cut wooden plugs to fit the holes, then found a brass pintle in the mud, which I filed to fit. When a club member came down early to put his boat on the piles for a scrub, he found me a galvanised bolt. This was replaced with a stainless steel one at Cowes the next week.
Peter told me later that ‘Her Grimm’ had lost his plate and been using two pieces of steel sheet held in place with G clamps. At first he convinced the police that he owned the yacht and produced his bill of sale but later it came out that he had stolen it from Hamburgh and changed the name. Interpol came up with a string of robberies. He was sentenced at Fareham court to six months, deportation and handed over to the German police.
Shoal Waters made a moonlight passage to Cowes, enjoyed the company of the Admiral’s Cup fleet for the week, took part in a Dinghy Cruising Association rally and then found a light breeze from the northwest to take her home to her mooring at Maldon.
