Chapter 25 Xmas 1993
Yachting writer Francis B, Cooke often did it before the First World War. Maurice Griffiths did it between the wars. The idea had always fascinated me but the family were not keen. The moon was full over Christmas 1993 and already into my second year drawing the old age pension, I decided it was now or never. I would spend the Christmas holiday on board my little gaff cutter Shoal Waters.
Preparation was everything. She is too small for a solid fuel stove but I have a Gaz radiant heater as well as the Gaz cooker. The deckhead is lined with polystyrene tiles and the inside of the hull with back packers closed cell ground sheet material. I have two sleeping bags which are kept warm continuously with two hot water bottles A supply of best steak and mince pies headed the stores. I had no plans for ambitious cruising and planned to stay within my beloved River Blackwater.
There was a gale warning for Thames at 1400 hrs on Christmas Eve and I spent the day anchored off Ray Island, alone with a few waders, as the wind screamed out of the northwest and rain lashed down. High water was at 2030 hrs. With one reef and guided by a fitful moon, I tore across the wild mouth of the River Blackwater and sounded my way onto the lee shore of the St Peters Flats. The red lights on the power station breakwater vanished behind the seawall and the massive building itself moved south to come in line with the little church crouching on the sea wall for its one thousandth, two hundred and eighteenth Christmas. I swung the bowsprit westerly towards the little creek leading to St Peters on the Wall. Suddenly the water smoothed out; the dim shapes of the saltings appeared on either hand, I furled the staysail and rushed forward to drop the anchor into two or three feet of water. There is only water in the creek for two or three hours and by midnight Shoal Waters was sitting on the firm mud like a fat contented duck. After a nap I opened the tent at midnight to be greeted by the vivid shadows of the mast and rigging thrown onto the mud by the brilliant moonlight, for the sky had cleared and the wind had dropped. The little church build by St Cedd at 675 A.D. in the western gateway of the old Roman fort of Orthona stood out boldly on the only rising ground for many miles. Out to sea, I could pick out the flashes of the Northwest Knoll and the Colne Bar buoys under the great constellation of Orion, which dominated the eastern sky. Away to the north were the lights of Mersea Island and Brightlingsea. Midnight mass came over the radio with `Silent Night`. I thought of walking over to the chapel but it was probably a good thing that I didn’t do so. It’s a bit of a spooky spot and when I looked in next day, I was surprised to find a nearly life sized Joseph and Mary by the altar. They might have looked a bit ghostly by moonlight!
On the morning high water the saltings were alive with vast flocks of hungry waders and geese waiting to feed on the exposed mud as soon as the tide retreated. After lunch the sun burst through as I tramped the miles of lonely marshes studying the ravages of the sea. A stake I had driven on the inner edge of a cockleshell bank advancing onto the saltings in early August was now twelve yards into the gleaming shells. These swathes of shells seem to kill off the vegetation leaving the mud bare and a soft target for the waves to attack. Even the farms here cower a mile or more inland. Smoky clouds of gulls and geese wheeled and turned over the endless mud and saltings outside the ten miles of sea wall between the Rivers Blackwater and Crouch. There are guts and rills here in which you could lay dead for the rest of your life without being found.
As night closed in after a perfect marshland sunset, I bedded down until the night tide, when I sailed across to West Mersea to anchor off the church at the entrance of the Besum Fleet for the rest of the night. The sun rose clean out of the sea next morning to prove once again that West Mersea is indeed the jewel of the East Saxon Shore. I sailed past `Old Mersea City` and through the gently waving withies on the oyster beds up to the Strood, the ancient causeway, covered at springs, which is still the islands` only link with the mainland. Halfway back, I anchored in the lee of the wooded Ray Island to chuck a steak and a couple of eggs into the frying pan as a fleet of sailing dinghies flowed out from the Hard, their gleaming white sails contrasting with the sparkling blue water. That afternoon I reached up the river over the ebb to anchor for the night off the old pier at Osea Island ready to pick up my mooring on Monday.
Another minor ambition achieved!
