Provisions, 5th August 2006. Photo: Margaret Richards.

A trip on Nancy Blackett, August 5th to 12th 2006, by Margaret Richards.

Sitting at home, looking at my road atlas, it all looked very simple…

August 5th:
We started at Woolverstone and moved a few miles down the river to Levington for the night, to be ready for a 4 am start the next day. But how would we know which buoys we could use for the night? The answer: we had Judy Taylor on board who has local knowledge.

August 6th:
To get from Levington to the mouth of the River Orwell looked easy enough. But it was still dark and we needed to count the number of flashes and note what colour they were to sort out which buoys to keep on the left and which on the right.

Once out of the river we just turned right and kept the land on the right and hey presto! But the visibility was poor and we needed to follow a compass course for the best route.

Sunset, 5th August 2006. Photo Margaret Richards.

When we reached Burnham-on-Crouch we could fill up with fuel, go to the Marina and have a bit of a snooze. But at the fuel barge the throttle cable broke and we could go nowhere until a kindly engineer came and did a temporary repair job with a bit of string and declined payment. We moved to the Marina, showered and slept.

August 7th:
We walked into Burnham-on-Crouch and treated ourselves to coffee and cakes in the morning. But our Skipper, Ron Viveash, stayed on board to oversee the fitting of a new throttle cable; the Crew, reluctantly, enjoyed the coffee and cakes.

Coffee and Cake, 7th August 2006. Photo: Margaret Richards.

We left for Brightlingsea after lunch, a nice afternoon’s sail with a couple of reefs in case the wind got up. But there were all sorts of shallow areas under what looked on my road map to be plain blue sea. Shoals and Swatchways, not to mention Wallets and Sands. We picked our way from buoy to buoy, and saw a yacht not far away going in the opposite direction. Next time we looked, we saw it was aground on Buxey Sand, nose down, rudder in the air.

We called the Coast Guard, who sent an inflatable to pull them off. Soon after this the wind increased considerably and we were going up and down like a bucking bronco; peering through our salt-laden specs to follow the Skipper’s commands of “10 degrees starboard” or “5 degrees to port, leaving the cardinal to starboard”. We arrived after our ‘nice afternoon’s sail’ at 8.30 pm with one or two more bruises than when we set off.

August 8th:
Brightlingsea to West Mersea was a short sail after yesterday’s efforts. But first a halyard had to be recovered from the top of the mast which meant gathering a few hefty chaps to haul Mark, our Mate, up there. Meanwhile Judy and I were entrusted with working out the route. Trouble was, in between putting on the kettle and showing visitors around, there wasn’t much time for passage planning.

However – we got there amidst all sorts of interesting boats returning from races. We also had a free water taxi from our mooring and a free shower at the Yacht Club as visiting yachties. The next day there was to be a ‘Round the Island’ race for dinghies – around Mersea Island rather than the Isle of Wight. Help was provided for the portage over the bridge.

August 9th:
We sailed up the Blackwater to Heybridge Basin, near Maldon. Well, surely that couldn’t be difficult, with a nice wide estuary shown on my map? But there were lots of shallow bits on the chart, and buoys that were difficult to spot at times.

Barge, 9th August 2006. Photo: Margaret Richards.

However, we made it in time to ‘lock in’ to the Basin near High Water, and moored next to a Dutch yacht with a very friendly native family on board, who were spending four weeks on the East Coast. They looked at our boat and were told all about Arthur Ransome, and we looked at theirs and heard how they had sailed up the Thames to St Catherine’s Dock one year. The children drew us a picture of Nancy Blackett with all the parts labelled in Dutch, now filed away for her next trip to Holland.

August 10th:
The chaps wanted to look at the engine – again, while ‘Susan’ and ‘Titty’ went to Maldon for paraffin and food. But the bus wasn’t due for another hour and a half so we were ready to walk the 2 miles along by the canal when a kindly native with webbed feet offered us a lift.

After stocking up with stores and a cup of coffee we were just going to phone for a taxi when we bumped into our Dutchman, who offered us a lift in his inflatable along the canal. We found the engineers happy to tell us that one of the visitors that morning was an RYA instructor in tin donkeys, so we’d all had a good morning.

We set off through the lock just after 1 pm and sailed fast and well all the way back to Levington, as strong winds were forecast for the next day. Everyone had a turn at putting the boat on a mooring for the night. But it’s not so easy coming up to a buoy and stopping within reach, taking account of tide and wind.

We had a noisy night with the buoy bumping against the hull until the tide turned. There was also quite a chop on the water added to the wash from a few large boats going to or from Ipswich. This may all sound awful but it was great! There’s no point being on a boat and not having movement and noises that you don’t get at home.

August 11th :
We practised ‘ferry gliding’ to a pontoon and turning round in a tight circle on the way to Ipswich. We tied up alongside Excelsior, last of the Lowestoft sailing trawlers, and practised jibing on the way back. It was easy-peasey – after several goes!

Nancy Blackett in Ipswich, 11th August 2006. Photo: Margaret Richards.

August 12th:
A tidy-up and a re-fuel, and Nancy Blackett was left shipshape for the next crew.

We could have done it more easily without the heavy showers, but we’d had a wonderful week with all sorts of experiences, lots of laughs and learned a lot. What more could anyone want?

– Margaret Richards