Page updated 19 March 2021
Trawling through some old photos I found a collection that were taken on 3 June 2012. That was, of course, the Sunday of the weekend we celebrated the Queen's Diamond Jubilee. My memory's a bit hazy after all this time, but prompted by what the photographs show, this is what I recall of the day.
If you any recollections of the day, especially if you appear in any of the photographs, that would help prod my memory please Share Them with me so I can add more detail to the page. If you have any photos of your own that would be appropriate to include on the page I would love to receive them.
Saturday Night
It seems that, unusually, The Muddy Broad Blues Band had played the pub on the Saturday night of the holiday weekend. The photograph, taken at 21:04, shows me playing slide on the infamous "£10 guitar from Argos". It was a package deal that included stand, bag, tuner and guitar, all at £ 60. But the catalogue had the various extras priced at a total of £50 when bought separately, hence the £10 guitar.
This was the earliest line-up for the Muddy Broad Blues Band, which had been formed earlier in the year.
Unfortunately, it did prove to be worth, at most, £10! A few weeks later the wood in the thinner part of the body to which the bridge was bolted split. The package was returned to Argos and the money refunded. It was replaced with a Yamaha instrument at more than twenty times the cost.
It seems the band took a break after the number we were playing. As three minutes later someone was passed my camera to take a photograph of Diana and I. We rarely started before 20:30 and often were later than that so it seems strange for the band to take a break so soon after the start. However, it wasn't unusual, in those early days, for us to take an unexpected break as Glenn would get side-tracked with pub management issues.
Diana and I! Taken at 21:07, three minutes after the previous photo, it seems the band may have been forced to take an unexpected break.
So, why include these pictures in an account of a trip in Just 17? Just to provide an explanation for why we didn't get to the boat all that early on the Sunday!
The Briefing
It wasn't just on the Saturday night that Glenn, the Pleasure Boat Inn landlord, had planned a bit of an event. On the Sunday there was to be a "well dressed boat" competition of some kind and, judging by the way some crews were dressed a well dressed boat included the crew. There was also to be a formal cruise or race of some kind, though I don't recall it being a serious one.
On her mooring outside the Pleasure boat Inn, the recently acquired bunting looked good on Just 17, if a little sparse.
So, after a late night on the Saturday, Diana and I managed to get back to the pub around lunch time. The first photograph was taken at 14:15, and that was after we had dressed Just 17 in her new bunting. I recall that the bunting had been a recent purchase. The shops were, after all, stuffed with celebratory materials at the time. Other photographs I have showed I had used the bunting at a BBQ I hosted at home for my neighbours a few days earlier.
Given the weather, you might think it was surprising how many were outside the pub. After taking the photo Diana I moved inside to get out of the rain but it turned out to be just as crowded inside, so I guess that's why so many were outside.
The bar was crowded and, like Just 17, it was decked out with bunting.
I wish I could remember what the programme for the day was. I suspect that something was due to happen at either 14:30 or 15:00. That's because, at 14:21, I took the photograph of Glenn, in a hat that I never saw again, in the process of giving a briefing for the event whatever it was supposed to be, a parade, cruise in company or even a race?
Glenn, with amazing hat and mug of coffee in hand, stands in front of a map of Hickling Broad.
The Cruise
The vagueness about the purpose and time of the start of the event, is because the next picture was taken at 15:15. If it was a race, it had clearly started by then and we were almost half way across the Broad. And it certainly wasn't a serious one or sailing boats wouldn't be trailing their outboard motor in the water.
Originally the caption on the picture below said:
I wish I could make out a registration number or name on this half-decker. Clearly, the reason I took it was because it contained what was, perhaps, the best dressed crew?
but Dave, drummer with the Muddies, emailed to say that it is his boat, Celeste and his wife, Maggie, is aboard. I don't think that was the reason I took it. She's half hidden behind a guy with his back to the camera. I think it was because its crew wore "interesting" head gear.
I didn't realise who the boat belonged to when I took this picture, but I'm sure that the reason I took it was because it contained what was, perhaps, the best dressed crew.
A couple of minutes later I find a pair of small dinghies to photograph, both displaying bunting. In the background is Ross Warrell's Lady Ann the boat, based at Horsey, that he uses for his wildlife spotting trips and with whom Glenn had developed a relationship after the start of the Proper Jobbies World Tour just over a year earlier.
It seems it was more than the usual collection of yachts that were involved in the event. Here we see decorated Topper and Laser dinghies.
It was almost a disappointment to see another half-decker a few moments later, this one with a lugsail rig, with neither bunting nor a "dressed" crew. Since the page was first published it's been confirmed that it is Dave, the Muddies drummer, sitting closest to the mast. I emailed him saying I think I could recognise him by the hat that he had been wearing the previous evening.
Taken less than 30 seconds after the previous picture, a heavily crewed half-decker.
The next photo, taken at 15:19, was the last I took of other boats out on the water that day. It was dressed in bunting with substantially bigger pennants set closer together than any of the other boats I'd seen.
I don't recall ever seeing so many boats that were so full. It was such a shame the weather was so poor!
After the burst of photo taking in the quarter of an hour from 15:15, I took no more photos until 17:15, when the picture shows Just 17 entering the Pleasure boat's dyke. The main sail has already been dropped and rolled around the boom. Other flags in the picture indicate that there is sufficient wind to allow the jib alone to take us all the way to our mooring at the head of the dyke.
It's now 17:15 and we are making our way into the Pleasure Boat's dyke. The mystery is what we had been doing in the previous two hours.
What I don't recall is what we were doing in the intervening two hours. Unlike that Glorious October Day in 2011 it didn't look like the kind of weather for playing my ukulele and having a sing-song. More likely we dropped the mud weight in my favourite bay between Swim Coots and Rush Hill and brewed a mug of warming tea!
It really was so disappointing, when photographs taken on the following day show Diana and I taking a walk along the Weavers Way in glorious sunshine.