Weekend Sailing on Rutland Water 22nd to 24th October 1999 
Dave Worrall and Ray Newton

Aeolian, Dave's Skipper 17 twin lifting-keel boat, is usually kept on her mooring at ASC, but Dave had taken her off early due to the high water level following days of heavy rain at the end of September/early October. All other boats had also been taken off their moorings.

Bearing in mind that insurance does not cover boats on moorings after the end of October, we wondered whether this was to be an early end to our sailing season? We didn't want it to be that way, so we put on our thinking caps to consider other sailing areas where we could give a good boat her head, and this led to the idea of looking at large lakes. The nearest is Rutland Water, a large reservoir outside Leicester, near to Oakham. When it was completed, some 20 years ago, it was the largest man-made lake in Europe, and we decided that Rutland was for us.

As this was to be a weekend to gain experience for future reference, we towed Aeolian with Ray's Autohome, setting off at 1510 on the afternoon of Friday 22nd. The journey was straightforward, but with traffic delays around Coventry we didn’t arrive until some 4 hours later. We overnighted in the car park and drove into the Water Sports Centre the following morning. After being relieved of £14 for two days parking and use of slipway, plus £4 to leave the boat there overnight, we were politely told that over-night camping or caravanning is not allowed! Poor rating for this limitation. The Sailing Club charges £37 but whether they allow overnighting we don't know. However, we were advised that if we patronized the local pub they sometimes allowed overnighting in their car-park - we did – and they did. In fact the ‘Noel Arms' in Whitwell is a very welcoming pub anyway, and well worth visiting. So that was to be our base for Saturday night – with the added benefit of being a very short walk "home" after lots of supping and a nice steak supper!

Launching is simple there, and we were rigged and canvassed and cast off at 1030 into a very brisk wind which was steady when compared with how fluky such a wind is on our Club’s water.

The wind strength increased all the time and was accompanied by some stronger gusts and rain showers. The sun did deign to show its face for a short while at around 1300, and as there aren't any shore-side pubs to aim for, we beached to have our lunch and a rest on the windward shore of the finger of land which makes the lake into a horse-shoe shape. There are safety boats on the water all day, and one was at our side within minutes enquiring whether we were all right- and shortly after that a cruising yacht also came close and enquired! As if river sailors would ever get into trouble!

It was a novel experience to sail in our small cruiser for 20 minutes or longer on a close tack instead of about 60 seconds on the river!... But, it has to be said, we both agreed that it is comparatively boring! What could be more testing of sailing skills than our river, tacking every minute or so, while needing to incorporate avoidance of motor vessels and/or anglers? And the activity keeps you warmer!

The clay, with which the lake (reservoir) is lined, is yellow, and is the consistency and tenacity of babies pooh (I’m not sure of the relevance of this description, but decided to leave it in, anyway: comments on the accuracy of the description will not really be welcome – Ed).

We sailed until 1630 and tied up on the pontoon back at the Centre. After asking, nicely, we were allowed to leave her moored to the pontoon over the Saturday night, as it was out-of-season and not busy. By the way, wooden slatted pontoons covered in Swans s... [stuff? mess!] are very slippery - Beware!

Later, as already mentioned, we drove to the Noel Arms and had a very nice steak dinner at reasonable cost, although the beer was expensive; Pedigree [bitter] £1.90 per pint compared to the West Midlands (Dudley area), where it is only £1.10.

We moved back to the boat at the Watersports Centre early on Sunday morning and had delicious grilled bacon baguettes for breakfast - a nice change from porridge for me [Stuff the diet!] We also grilled some lovely pork and apple sausages and put them into crusty rolls ready for our lunch.

The rain and wind were even stronger, with the latter backed from SW to ENE creating white cap waves which, without means of accurate measuring, seemed to be a top Force 4 with some gusting to top Force 5. (I know that South-westerly gale-force winds had been predicted in the SW sea areas, but we had not really expected them in the East Midlands!) At one time the wind gusted so strongly during a squall that our starboard run with spinnaker flying was suddenly curtailed by being pushed round to starboard - Ray was helming and couldn't overcome the weather helm - and the spinnaker was now on a beam reach and pulling us over - we were broaching! Fortunately Dave managed - quite quickly really, although it seemed an age at the time - to collapse the spinnaker and get it stowed. We did not use the spinnaker, which got very wet in the manoeuvre, again that day, even just to dry it out! Hairy, to say the least! But proof again of the sea-kindliness of Skipper-class vessels in general and Aeolian in particular. This was also borne out by the fact that five more Skippers were in the boat park. Interestingly, the cruising boats there are all trailer sailers - some fairly big ones too – due to lack of moorings facilities, we assumed.

In these very trying conditions we had more-or-less had enough by 1330, so decided to tie up and begin preparations for returning home. We calculated that we had sailed about 40 miles during the weekend. From the dam at the Eastern end to the sailing limitation lines at the Western ends of both sides of the horseshoe is 5 miles and we did the doubles four times each, plus some extra bits.

All in all it was an excellent weekend and we can recommend Rutland Water for sailing. We saw all sorts of sailing craft there: windsurfers, Toppers, catamarans, outrigger-monohulls (going very, very fast in the strong winds) all the way up to cruiser-racers. The class races which we saw had some 30/40 competitors, but whether these were all Rutland Sailing Club members or whether it was an Open meeting, we do not know. There were lots of anglers too, both onshore and in hired open motor boats, but there is plenty of space for all.

Where next? Perhaps to Windermere, because Dave, with his wife Chris, has sailed there before and there are several pubs to aim for!

Ray Newton