Learning the Thames Estuary continued

  Once in Harwich, I anchored in the lee of the town to reef the mainsail and let another squall pass over. Then I began to beat slowly up the River Orwell towards Pin Mill as the sun broke through. Zephyr is very poor to windward under reefed mainsail only. The jib I had was too small for normal work and too big for rough going. This was my first visit to Pin Mill which I had read of as the `Mecca` of east coast yachtsmen and I liked it as much any of them. I beached over on the western shore and the warm sun soon dried out my gear. The barge Redoubtable was fitting out on the hard together with other craft of all sorts and sizes. Next morning the local sailmaker behind the Butt and Oyster pub mended my sail for two shillings and sixpence. From now on the coast north was completely unknown to me. The O.S. map showed the River Deben just round the corner and I left at 1830 hrs as the wind began to ease for a very steady trip out of the harbour and up the coast to the Deben entrance. This was the first calm period I had experienced for some time and I enjoyed every moment of it. There was all the time in the world to get into the River Deben, which is only five miles north. The red lights on the pylons of the wartime radar towers on the northern shore guided me after the sun went down and darkness closed in. It was 0100 hrs when I reached the bar but couldn’t make any sense of it so I her drift out a little and anchored to doze until daylight. At 0400hrs a fine breeze carried me in over the bar but it soon died, leaving me drifting along on a sea of sky among the marshes while all the birds in creation seemed to be singing their heads off around me. Wind came in again off Waldringfield to give me a fine sail to Woodbridge where I worked my way into the saltings south of the town to beach under a great oak tree. Once the tide had gone, I might have well been on the fringe of Epping Forest! That evening a chap came along who had been the mate on the Tuesday, the last barge on the River Deben . She had been engaged carrying shingle from Shingle Street, a few miles up the coast, to Woodbridge for road building but the owner skipper had never been paid and was eventually found dead on board, presumably of malnutrition.

  Zephyr was already afloat when I woke on Tuesday. After breakfast I sailed up to the town and anchored in midstream from where the local ferryman put me ashore for I was getting short of food. Going to the butchers with my ration card could have two results. Some just palmed me off with any old meat that they wanted to get rid of while others, possibly sailing men, went to the other extreme. I left Woodbridge with a whole rabbit and a big piece of steak. It was 1115 hrs by the time I got away for a swift trip down river. A little rain passed over but the sun came out again as I reached the bar. The strong ebb tide racing southwest from the river met the ebb tide coming northeast up the coast in a rare old popple which threw the boat about alarmingly but I was soon swept clear.

  The five miles due north up the coast to the entrance to the dreaded River Ore passed quickly and I found the Martello towers very useful landmarks. Shingle Street, a cluster of cottages along the shoreline, looked a very desolate spot. As all writers predict, I had a job to spot the entrance to the river but by hugging the shore, I found my way in with no trouble and soon reached Orford where I bought some milk and cakes before pressing on to Aldeburgh with the strong flood tide. The last part of the trip was done under jib, for it was blowing hard now. I anchored in the sweep of the river off Slaughden Quay not realising that the water is very deep here. She began to drag but the local club boatman put me on a mooring for the night and seemed worried at my plan to stay on board.

  “Have you got anything to eat?” he asked.

  Some hours later I lay on my bunk having eaten a complete rabbit together with onions and potatoes.

  Next morning at half past five I woke feeling fresh and bright. The tide was flooding, there was a light breeze and the obvious thing to do was to press on upstream to the first road bridge at Snape. It is a delightful spot. The village is about a mile from the bridge along a lovely country lane. The local shopkeeper told me that no one in the village sold newspapers but that if I came back in half an hour he would get me one from the paper-boy. Half an hour later there was still no paper but as I left the shop the local bobby was very pleased to see me. He seemed to suspect that I was one of the two lads who had escaped from the nearby Borstal Institution the previous day. I explained that I had come by boat and had been sailing very hard for several days so had not found time to shave. We walked back to the bridge from where I showed him Zephyr anchored in midstream.

  “Where is your dinghy?” he asked triumphantly. I explained that she was anchored but that a lazy painter lay under the water from the boat to a stake hidden in the long grass on the bank. A pull on the line and I could step on board. He believed me at last and we had a chat on the lovely old bridge (long gone) until the tide turned and it was time to go. I took the ebb back to Slaughden Quay where I beached for the night. From here it is nine miles back to the open sea but the sea is only a few yards away from the quay over the shingle bank. It broke through completely in 1953 and since then hundreds of thousands of pounds have been spent in keeping Father Neptune at bay. The idea of sailing in at Shingle Street and going out again at Aldeburgh is always attractive to yachtsmen but the snag is that millions would have to be spent to raise the sea walls for the rise and fall in the river is about seven feet against twelve feet outside. Furthermore there would be a danger of erosion taking most of the town of Aldeburgh into the sea. The village of Slaughden once sent fishing vessels to Iceland for cod and the chap who helped with my mooring told me there were twenty-seven kids in the school in his time. Today it has all gone!

  Now it was time to think of the journey back home. Thursday brought a light breeze from the east and I made a pleasant passage round into Harwich and up the River Orwell as far as Freston from where I walked into Ipswich to collect mail on Friday. Later in the day I sailed round into the River Stour and drifted rather than sailed towards Manningtree. By the time I anchored for the night, the tent was already up and supper nearly ready. Small boat life was beginning to swing along smoothly. I shopped in Manningtree morning while the tide flooded. The westerly wind gave me a fine sail down river and across Dovercourt bay into Walton Backwaters where I moored for the night on the eastern bank just below Foundary Hard. To prevent the boat swinging inshore and drying high on the mud during the night, I used the dagger plate as a stern anchor to keep the boat lying fore and aft along the channel. Next day as she floated I found that I could not pull the plate out of the mud. I remembered reading that the mud here has a reputation for being sticky stuff and that barges would lay a chain under them before taking the ground ready for loading. If the mud held them down as the tide rose, the chain was hauled back and forth to break the suction under the boat and release her. My only plan was to make fast the plate as short as possible to the stern and wait for the bow to rise as the tide came in.(because the plate held the stern down). Then I walked forward and the leverage pulled the plate out of the mud. The wind was easterly and I worked my way along the Twizzle channel, across the Wade and through the maze of saltings south of Skippers Island to Landmere. With the ebb I left the Backwaters and worked my way round the Naze to reach and run down the coast to Brightlingsea.

  Monday was a heavy overcast day with little wind. I went up the River Colne as far as Wivenhoe with the flood and returned on the ebb to take the evening flood into the River Blackwater. In pitch darkness (no street lights in those days & no brilliantly lit power station) I got lost somewhere off the tail of Northey Island so I anchored for the night. Next day, Tuesday, in warm sunshine I sailed up to my mooring and so ended my first cruise.

  Looking back over fifty years later, I realise that it was the most important sailing experience of my life. Sailing day in and day out, one gets the feel of the boat and the problems of winds and tides and learns far more than can ever be learnt in years of day and weekend sailing. I sailed well over three hundred miles in five and a half weeks which is not much by my standards today but it had given me a working knowledge of the whole estuary on which to build for the future. Of course far too little time had been spent actually sailing, far too much time was spent ashore but some good passages had been made. I settled back into the routine of weekend sailing, a very different chap from the one who battled home from Brightlingsea a year before. Zephyr was improved with a larger jib with reef points, which would be useful when running without the mainsail in heavy weather. Little did I realise that it would be twenty-four years before I used it for that purpose.