Loading up The Range Rover and towing Daniel’s old boat we battled the wind and arrived at Percival’s and dropped boat and trailer for sale under brokerage. Then to Heronshaw and a right battle with two pike anglers in a boat before I eventually forced them to leave.
The Bloom family arrived in their new boat to look around Heronshaw and the Paxton Princess and had lunch and helped me erect the flagpole and "Jenny Morgan" wind vane atop and stayed a while to help as I worked on the boat. I met the Parker family from The Haven later.
This morning, I loaded up the Range Rover to set off for Norfolk and had the Little Lady in tow. It was fine but very windy and I had to soon stop to put down the vinyl hood as it was tearing in the wind. On the way, I dropped by Sally's and left some more copy for the printers which was quite an event in Avenue Road because of the boat and trailer etc. I had to drive steadily along the A45, but I arrived well before noon at Percival’s Boatyard and discussed the sale of the boat on brokerage before leaving it there on the trailer. They will put a price of £3000 on it but will do a couple of hundred pounds' work first to make it look better to potential purchasers.
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I then drove over to Heronshaw and ran straight into problems with unauthorised anglers off of my property. There were two ruffians in a dinghy, moored with mud-weights on my side of Ropes Hill Dyke, within a few feet of my bank. I asked them to move but they would not. I returned and tried to explain that it was a private dyke with no right of navigation and with reserved fishing rights: Also that, as riparian owner, I did not want them to moor there. They still would not go. I gave them an ultimatum to go within 10 minutes and they continued to be very abusive and were set to defy me. I asked to see their fishing licenses (under the bye-laws fishermen have to carry their licenses with them when fishing and to produce them on demand to any other license holder) but they refused. This was a cunning idea on my part as it was one way of trying to establish their identity in case of trouble and, by them refusing, it put them the wrong side of the criminal law.
Then I brought things to a head by going to the garage and bringing a long-handled pruning pole to cut their mud-weight rope. They went berserk at this point, threatening me with even more violence and abuse and one of them tried to stand up and leap ashore to attack me, but the wind carried him off and I fended off with the pruning pole until he calmed down a bit. I offered to retrieve their mud-weight with a boathook if they left which I did and after this they left in a foul mood, defeated but still threatening. I realised that they were probably determined to wreak revenge at some point, but I felt that, as an issue of principle, I should not let abuse and threats of violence overturn legal rights.
As I then continued to unload, the Bloom family arrived on their new boat and moored up to have a look around Heronshaw and the Paxton Princess. They were intrigued to hear of the incident and invited me for lunch at The Swan and so we took their boat across. Unfortunately, we missed lunch which ended at 2.00pm sharp which was a pity but, by buying supplies from the local shops, and taking them to the Paxton Princess, we prepared a snack lunch there and enjoyed the refreshment and company of one-another. The Bloom boys stayed afterwards and helped me put up the flag pole and "Jenny Morgan" wind vane atop (which was a wind vane from the old wherry Arcadia). Old Jack Edwards came down later. He had seen the anglers earlier and they had ignored him as well.
I did one or two jobs today such trying to fit the new anchor chain and also took the 2HP Mariner outboard to try out on the Zodiac Inflatable. To my horror, the inflatable seat was missing from the tender and must have been blown away in the gales. We took my other dinghies and looked up and down Ropes Hill Dyke in vain and so now I will have to get another one. My ship's radio license had arrived in this morning's post and so I tried making a link call home via Bacton Coast Radio later but did not realise that the wind had blown my VHF aerial down! I met the family with a property at the mouth of the dyke today - first the grown-up son Andrew and then his wife, Frances, two small boys and mother. His father had died last winter, which was sad, but they are a nice family from Cheshire and Andrew owns a Pharmacy there.