Despite having an ongoing gearbox stubshaft alignment issue, the problem wasn’t severe enough for us to bail out of the essential northern Broads Freeman meet at Salhouse.

The meet ran over three’ish days, with two overnights starting on the Friday. With us living a modest distance away from the boat and Friday being a school day and not being able to leave Suffolk until the evening, there was no way we were going to be able to join the meet at a reasonable hour for the Friday night. Instead we made our way to the boat and stayed on our home berth at Ranworth for the night.

This turned out to be quite a noisy affair with two bathtubs laden with lads crashing into each other for a night time mudweighting rendezvous complete with a loud sound system. My heart did start to sink having to endure yet another of countless waterbourne all-night raves this season. However, the sound system sounded pretty good and instead of the usual music for five year olds that people play, tunes from Kool and the Gang and Toto were being dropped. The aqua-revellers also steadily reduced the volume until knocking it on the head around midnight and actually wasn’t bad ! Certainly no worse than some live bands I’ve heard booming out of the Maltsters trying to sound like they were playing Madison Square Gardens rather than to five bemused octogenarians and a dog on the benches outside.

Saturday morning was cloudy but not cold, so after washing the boat down and dressing ‘Lady’ up in bunting we made for a leisurely passage to Salhouse. En-route we encountered Martin our mechanic at Horning Sailing Club where his children were participating in their final youth regatta of the year. Passing them we did ask if they wanted us to hold up any of their competitors in toppers.

We arrived at Salhouse to a completely full house. The entire mooring was packed with what must have been over thirty Freemans. Truly a sight to behold for us enthusiasts. Fortunately we had booked a slot and with a little shuffling we were in, next to a Freeman 22 MKI which had the finest cockpit joinery and finish I’ve yet seen. The boat it’s self was trailered down just for the meet. In fact quite a few ‘new’ boats came from waterways other than the Broads.

With so many boats, we hardly had the chance to speak with everybody but word must have got around, partially via this blog, that we’d be good for imparting some wisdom on re-wiring, re-painting headlinings, general electrics and fitting fridges.

We weren’t organised enough to bring a BBQ, so did miss out a little on the social side of things but the compulsory paper plane flying contest and quiz went down really well bringing everyone together regardless of which end of the moorings they were berthed.

Rupert brought along his immaculate F8 (an original Freeman tender intended to fit the Freeman Davits (but is responsible for breaking many of them as it’s quite heavy). This added some great entertainment for the brave as they’re not the most stable boats.

Sunday morning saw the gazebo’s coming down and a fair dose of bankside chat ahead of boats leaving before midday in dribs and drabs. In years gone by, most boats would leave together in a flotilla towards Horning which was always a wonderful experience. Sadly this is less easy to orchestrate with the larger number of boats that participate now.

With much of Sunday left, we decided to join a small flotilla of boats heading up the River Ant for a spot of fishing. It was a bit of a challenge to find space but having lost a couple of boats on the way, we ended up at Paddy’s Lane moorings opposite Barton Turf.

I took the opportunity to give Lady a bit of a polish whilst my Daughter joined the others in a mini fishing contest for Roach and Skimmers. I’m not sure who won.

Having had a bite to eat on board it was time to head home. I actually had a moment of melancholy as the thinner sun was setting over the reeds signalling the end of a summer that was far too short but spent with lovely people.