On Sunday Nancy Blackett left Ipswich at 4.30pm with skipper David Johnson, who had kindly stepped in at short notice to replace Ed Williams and enable his keen crew to have a couple of days’ sailing. Our mate was Sue Milward and the crew were Peter Horsley, over from Australia, and Nicola Farr. We had a lovely evening sail downriver and picked up a mooring just before Levington, where we cooked and ate a meal. Meanwhile David considered tides, weather reports and crew commitments and reluctantly concluded that we would not be able to join the Old Gaffers’ cruise to the Deben after all and proposed an alternative trip to the Walton Backwaters. There were some busy minutes finding phone numbers for the organisers and the Ramsholt Arms to let them know, and then we retired to bed.

The quiet of the night was disturbed by what we took to be a party involving drums on the shore, (a savage corroboree?) and we bemoaned the difficulty of finding peace in this modern world.

The next day we sailed/motored down past Felixstowe container port, turned into the Stour for a quiet sail while eating lunch, then headed down to the Walton Backwaters and found a place at Titchmarsh Marina. We noticed that a handful of the Old Gaffers had had the same change of plan as us and were in the Walton river. Once again we enjoyed a meal in Nancy’s cabin. That night we realised that the drums of the night before were actually on board Nancy! Something was sending reverberations down the mast… unfortunately we didn’t have the time to investigate and find out what, but this would be well worth doing for future crew comfort.

During the night the weather had deteriorated, bringing rain and a change in wind strength and direction, leaving us with no choice but to motor back to Woolverstone, where the cruise ended. This wasn’t without interest, though, as we passed more interesting craft including Thames Barges and a French sail training vessel.

– Report and photo: Nicola Farr