h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Today is Y for yachts.

This is misleading as we never had a yacht. What we had was a small sailing cruiser, which my father built out of wood, in the garage of our house in Rugby. When we moved to Chislehurst in South London, the boat sat on our drive, covered in grey plastic, earning the name of Hippo.

My father obtained a cheap mooring at Elmley in the Isle of Sheppey and we took Hippo there. It was a strange and mournful place: low grazing marshes, divided by little creeks and a few windblown trees. The clubhouse of the Yacht Club was in a second- war minesweeper, which wallowed in one of the creeks. Decrepit and black-painted, it looked like something out of David Copperfield.

Although my brothers joined Dad in sailing Hippo, my mother and I just went along for the ride. I was more interested in the wildlife: clouds of lapwings, occasional waders picking along the tide line and big birds of prey said to be marsh harriers. There were always problems with the tide. Our boat was moored some way from the landing stage and we used a dinghy to row across to the mooring, but at low tide the boat sat on the mud.

Once we went out sailing:Dad, my two brothers, my mother and I. By the time we returned to the mooring, the tide was ebbing fast. There was only room in the dinghy for two, so Dad and my elder brother took turns carrying Mum, my second brother and me to the landing stage. Dad and my elder brother were left in Hippo as an expanse of glistening mud opened up.

They rowed the dinghy to the edge of the mud but even this shallow boat stuck fast, with a few yards of mud between it and the landing stage. Dad, always an ingenious man, took the oars and laid them on the mud and crawled back along them. This left my brother. He cautiously laid a foot on the mud and sank in. He took another step, sank in to his thighs and waved his arms to keep his balance. As he pulled his foot free, covered in thick, black mud, my second brother and I watched, helpless from the landing stage. Eventually, he made it and we pulled him out.

At the time, I laughed to see my brother floundering but we heard from the owners of the sailing club that someone drowned trying to cross the mud.

Mud, mud, glorious mud.
Nothing's quite like it for cooling the blood.

[Amy P]

I know that kind of mud, it sounds like what you get off the coast around Weston Super Mare. My mum & my niece (5 at the time) got stuck in it, although not far from the sand line so managed to get back to safety quickly. But even now two years later my niece refers to it as yucky-sucky mud and it took a while to get her near the sea again. My mum won't take the kids anywhere near a beach with that kind of mud any more so now we go to Rhyll rather than Weston for our summer day out.

Apart from the mud incident, it sounds like lovely family times on your boat.

Deb

It's estuary mud - the product of rivers carrying silt and debris downstream, flat land near the tide line, and strong tides. to be avoided.