THE RIVER ORWELL
We clear the shelter of Woolverstone hill and Missee Lee's ensign cracks purposefully. She heels to the breeze and carves a white wake across the brown waters of the Orwell. The ebb tide urges us downriver past rolling, green, wooded shores.
A gaff ketch weighs anchor as we pass Pin Mill. I'm sat down to leeward,out of the chill breeze and enjoying the sunshine. We exchange waves as Missee Lee passes. Waves that celebrate the joy of a sail on the river, surrounded by the crisp colours painted by an equinoxial sun.
The Suffolk countryside evaporates abruptly, as we round Fagbury Point. To starboard the River Stour opens a yawning mouth. It beckons us to meander with it,up to Manningtree, to dip our bilge keels in the Essex mud. We decline the invitation and sail by. On past spidery cranes, tending the dormant bulk, of salt stained leviathans.The towering ships are briefly resting on the Flexistowe wharves, before resuming their global roaming.
As Harwich comes abeam our headlong rush seawards slows. The tide turns has turned.
A Colchester Smack has timed her entrance to the river perfectly. She rounds Landguard Point and surges majestically upriver towards us. Her foaming bow wave paints a smile across her sharp black prow. Her towering white topsail harvests the invisible energy from a blue sky. Missee Lee gybes round to follow her up to Pin Mill, trailing in her wake and revelling at the sight before us.
PIN MILL
Big Suffolk skies;
squat, flint-built, churches;
rolling fields, painted autumn gold;
and the warm Suffolk welcome of The Butt and Oyster.
At Pin Mill, the land is on such terms, of intertwined familiarity with the water..........
.........that it becomes difficult to discern where the land ends and the water begins.
A barge ghosts upriver, in a dying breeze, carried upstream by the last of the flood.
The sun kisses the treetops, before lying down behind them to rest. The wind hushes, leaving the river to a mirror calm silence. A silence broken only by the farewell caresses of the ebb-tide, on the mudflats; and by the good-night calls of Oystercatchers.
THE RANSOME CONNECTION
Alma Cottage, on the Pin Mill waterfront, was once home to Arthur Ransome. His boat Nancy Blackett was moored here. She was the hero of "We Didn't Mean To Go To Sea," (Ransome's tale of an accidental North Sea crossing from Harwich to Vlissingen, in Holland) under the stage name of Goblin.
My favourite childhood book was "We Didn't Mean To Go To Sea." It inspired me to name my Elan 31, Goblin.
Today, Nancy Blackett, the original Goblin, is actively sailed by the Nancy Blackett Trust from Woolverstone Marina - upriver from Pin Mill.
Missee Lee was named after another Ransome book. Whilst returning from a cruise to Holland, she met up with Nancy Blackett, in Ramsgate.
