The Power of a Dream?

The sun clambers up into a clear blue sky, above Pyefleet Creek . Stargazer lies companionably, at anchor, alongside Pioneer in the lee of the low heath land of the spit.

A gentle breeze fills in as noon approaches. The tide turns in our favour. We make sail.

Stargazer slips out past the pastel beach huts of Brightlingsea harbour.

Its a lazy, tide assisted, drift out over the bar to the Swin spitway.

We ease sheets, hoist the cruising chute and broad reach south, toward the Kent shore.

At sunset I hand the chute and gybe round, to catch the first of the flood tide into the Medway. Stargazer ambles over the swell. Woooshh, hisss, woooshh, hisss woooshh, hisss. Deep sleepy breaths.

 The shipping, outward bound from London, rumbles by in the deep water channel to starboard. Bound, into the darkness, for far off shores. There's a bitter sweet moment at the end of every cruise. Part fond re-acquaintance with the familiar anchorages of home waters. Part dreaming of new ports to be explored, new passages yet to be sailed - longing for the cruise to continue. We anchor in Godwit Creek. Our way lit by long shadowed, silvery, moonlight. The night magically still.

The power of a dream is a strong force. Overnight we voyage, in cyberspace at least, to Terneuzen on the Westerschelde. Our landfall of a year ago. A happy echo from the past.

On-line japes are afoot on the Marine Traffic tracking app. Stargazer has been electronically spirited across the tumbling waters of the North Sea, in the twilight hours of the night, whilst we rested in our tranquil anchorage - dreaming of night passages to come.

Crossing the Bar

A smouldering, smoking, sizzling sunset snakes across The Pyefleet as Stargazer anchors for the night.

We slipped out of the Orwell on the noon tide. Threading our way between the wooded banks. Skipping from one puff of breeze to the next, sails eased and bellied.

Off the Harwich foreshore 18 knots of passage making breeze fills in, to speed us on our way.

Clear of the Naze's lee, Stargazer heels to a 22 knot south westerly. I tuck two reefs in the main. We short tack, close inshore, down The Wallet. Cheating the north bound tide. Eating our way steadily south past Frinton and Clacton. Their jutting piers, landmarks of our progress.

The chance of a short cut beckons. I run some quick tidal calculations (we are near the bottom of a falling tide), double check my latest chart (the Navionics app on my phone, with its weekly over the air updates), take a deep breath and commit. Stargazer surfs and surges north of The Eagle cardinal, over Priory Spit. The depth guage counts inexorably down. My heart rises steadily toward my mouth. The countdown stops at 2.4 metres and reverses. We're over.

One last tack clears the southern tip of the Colne Bar. Now we ease sheets, relax in the evening sun and fly into the River Colne. Broad reaching with the young flood under us.

 An ethereally delicate full moon rises in the north east sky. I stow Stargazer's sails in the stillness of the creek .

Harry King's Boatyard

The midday sun warms my back, whilst I lunch at the Butt and Oyster.

The day had dawned autumnal, misty and still.

A better day for walking than for sailing. Better still to exercise my recalcitrant back into shape. As I walk, the sun burns off the mist, banishes the foretaste of autumn and ushers in a languid, late summer's, day.

Now I sit drinking in the timeless view. Before me the Thames barge 'Cambria' spreads her sails to dry, in a zephyr of breeze. A delightful, anachronous, somnolent, dragon yawning and stretching its wings, before settling down to bask on the uncovering foreshore.

Behind me lies Harry King's bohemian boatyard.  The yard which built 'Peter Duck' for Arthur Ransome (author of Swallows and Amazons) and 'Thankful' for Denny Desoutter (the founding editor of Practical Boat Owner).

The yard is an organic cornucopia of boating dreams, boating projects. Some seemingly returning to 

mother nature, like this once proud Colchester Smack.

Others merrily making a, three generation, family affair of refitting for sea.

A renascent Peter Duck class ketch is nurtured to glowing health. Soon to exchange the verdant stillness of the upper yard for the undulating swells of the North Sea.

The tide is ebbing fast now. House boats joining the pastel painted cottages, their land-bound cousins, on terra firma - until the tide returns, to free them, this evening.

The sister ship to 'Thankful' - a bowspritted, clinker, Harry King built, centre-boarder - rests a weary shoulder against the weathered timbers of the pontoon and snuggles down contentedly among the sedge.

I watch as candyfloss clouds boil across the wide Suffolk horizon. Listen as the wading birds call, and the water tip toes softly away from the hard with its eclectic menagerie of craft . I scent the salty lure of new shores, carried in on that zephyr of breeze.

The wind is forecast to fill in tomorrow, somewhere between a south westerly four and a six, veering west later. My back has straightened and strengthened. All being well, we sail on the noon tide.

Regatta Day

A Folkboat, varnished topsides aglow, roisters upriver. Beating hard in the blustery September breeze.

Serendipity smiles upon us, in our sheltered anchorage below Pin Mill. We have the best seats in the house for Regatta Day on the Orwell. 

Off the Butt and Oyster hard, Colchester smacks rig up and sail purposefully from their moorings. Jockeying for position on the start line, beneath the gnarled oaks of the ancient woodland. 

Then they are off. Stampeding down river toward us. Gaff yards squared away. Sails bellied purposefully, bow waves glinting. The rush of water and the roar of wind combining in a thunderous tumult. 

They race neck and neck downriver. An historic parade of working sail reveling in a weekend work out.

Stargazer sails off her anchor, to catch high water on the Deben Bar. Within moments capricious fate intervenes and changes our cruise plan. I find myself listing to port, lower back 'out,' struggling to work the boat.

We turn and tack, gingerly, upriver toward Woolverstone. I clamber ashore to walk the wooded trails. The best medicine I know for a discombobulated back.

An Autumnal Blast

Stargazer slips joyfully down the Medway on the evening tide. A footloose week of cruising in prospect.

We anchor below Thames Port...

...ready to set off at break of day.

A benign south westerly force four carries us into the dawn.

We gybe languorously across the Thames shipping lanes, on a sun filled September morning, heading north. Skirting the Maplin Sands, making for the shallow Swin Spitway. Gateway to the Suffolk Rivers.

In an instant, an autumnal blast banishes the sun from the sky with leaden grey clouds. The wind rises, with a shriek. Force 5, force 6, force 7, gusts of 8. Stargazer's ensign lashes the cockpit. We broach up uncontrollably. Over powered and over canvassed, fully committed to the narrow spit way, less than half a metre beneath the keel, no room to turn (to reef).

Ahead of us a stately Thames barge suffers the same undignified fate. She lets fly main, topsail and mizzen to stay on her feet. We follow suit, ragging our way into deeper water under a cacophony of flogging sailcloth, beating sheets and straining rigging.

Stargazer surfs north, making between 8 and 9 knots. Now back under control with a double reefed jib and no main. Riding the swells, past The Naze and down into the Medusa Channel. Our intended destination is the River Deben, entered by its notoriously shoal bar and shifting approach channel.. 

These are not the conditions to feel our way into that river. Instead Stargazer ducks inside Landguard Point and sweeps up the River Orwell.

We round up in the shelter of Pin Mill's wooded shore...

...and drop anchor. Perhaps conditions will be fair for the Deben tomorrow.Cruising in September can be a serendipitous affair.

The Promise

Shore-side lights, from a distant weekday terra firma world, sparkle across our anchorage. Twilight calm settles like a sigh of relief. Stargazer reclines on mercury smooth, sunset burnished waters.

There was a scramble to cross the lock cill whilst we still had enough tide. An opportunity seized when a Friday afternoon meeting finished early and the prospect of an evening sail beckoned irresistibly. 

Then we were scudding free into a world half water half land. Threading our way into its shimmering, tawny, paludarium heart.

We alight for the night....

....amid the wading geese. Dusk gathers and the bubbling, ethereal, joyous trill of curlew hangs, like a spell, amid the stillness. A rushing tide laps its soft lullaby against the mudflat ooze. The timeless chorus of the marsh.

Overnight a companion slips silently into the anchorage beside Stargazer.

The morning tide slowly rises, lifting us above the sheltering sedge, to reveal the promise of a new day. Today the call of the Suffolk river anchorages has replaced the call of the curlew. A message to heed when, winds willing, Stargazer sets sail for her autumn cruise in four short days' time.