When looking at some photos of Pelicans like the one illustrated, it brought back memories of a special trip I made with two other photographers many years ago.
We had been told that there was a large colony of Pelicans nesting on an island not too far off the coast, south from Stanage Bay.
One of our group had not long before, purchased a boat of his own and was keen to try it out. My knowledge of sailing was virtually nil but our third member was more experienced.
After securing the boat on the back of his trailer, we headed off early in the morning from Rocky. The trip to Stanage Bay was fairly rough in places back then which was prior to much of the area being taken over by the army as it is now.
After arriving at Stanage, we backed onto the ramp and were able to slip the boat off into the water. After parking the car and trailer safely out of the road, we were ready to go.
It was a lovely clear day with a gentle breeze and the motor kicked in at first try.
All seemed to be going to plan for about 15 minutes when the motor stopped. Our seamen worked on it for quite a while but to no avail.
Fortunately, the boat was also equipped with sails but none of the three of us had ever put them up before so this was a major challenge in itself.
How we got the sail up and in place I’m not really sure, but ‘trial and error’ with a lot of errors, might be a good description.
We made it back to Stanage safely but the trip to Pelican Island had to be abandoned.
