Well, I think Countryfile did us proud, writes NBT chairman Peter Willis. Ten minutes’ airtime is good going, even if it did take most of the day to capture it. It all began with a phonecall about a fortnight before the shooting. “We’d like to film Nancy Blackett being launched,” said the BBC. “Fine,” said I. “Should be no problem. She’s going in around the 8th or 9th of April.”. “No,” said the BBC. “”We want to do it on Good Friday.” “Ah, well…” I began. “We’ve talked to the yard, “said the BBC. “They said it’s not a problem.”
And so it wasn’t. Apart from a few little jobs like getting the antifouling done, and rounding up the sails from Lawrence’s where they’d gone for their winter refurbishment, Nancy was pretty well ready to go. More than ready in fact. She’d just had a major hull repaint and was looking immaculate.
The Countryfile team seemed to have a sketchy idea of what was involved in launching a boat from winter lay-up – the original script involved putting her in the water, bending on the sails and sailing away – not actually in one continuous take, but that seemed to be roughly what they were after. Some discussions took place and compromises were arrived at. Robertsons managed to refit the mast, and rerig it while Nancy was still in the launch cradle, which meant the mainsail could be bent on, and reefed, in advance, leaving just the staysail to be hanked on in front of the camera.
The actual sailing time was rather constrained by the period between having enough water to float Nancy, and the point at which there would no longer enough to float her over the sill into the Tidemill marina. It was a blustery day, so we kept the main well reefed down, and made do with just the one foresail. Nevertheless, Nancy cuts a pretty impressive dash on-screen, and Matt Baker found her a pleasure to handle.
A beeping noise made its presence felt, and once we’d worked out that it wasn’t coming from anyone’s phone, or the mass of filming and recording equipment on board, but was in fact the warning signal from our own depth sounder, we were able to inject a little drama into the proceedings with a quick controlled gybe and away again across the empty Deben.
Matt Baker was in his element on the helm “I’m in synch with Nancy,” he chortled – and skipper Bryan Bonser’s pensive “Yes, I think you were,” is for me one of the delights of the film.
OK, so there are a few little glitches: Suffolk was not Arthur Ransome’s home county – he was born in Leeds and only lived in this area for a few years. Mike Illingworth of Robertsons did not “restore” Nancy over the winter – that was comprehensively accomplished by Mike Rines a good few years ago. But the essence of the thing was right and for me, it was an early but exhilarating “first sail of the year”.
Please now watch our own compilation below of the four Nancy Blackett parts that were spread throughout the hour-long Countryfile episode.