Out of Lockdown 12

 

Two Swallows alight. Resting from their swooping, soaring, skimming, acrobatics. Resplendent in red white and blue finery. They know that today is the lull before the storm. A day suspended languidly between two weather systems. Tomorrow it will blow hard from the west. Today the air is still.

It is a day to explore the world of 'betweens,' beyond the Butt and Oyster.

On the shingle foreshore, somnolent wooden craft lie waiting, for the touch of the tide to reawaken them. Eager to put to sea once more. Travellers on the wind.

Further on, weary craft, their sea going days now over, rest well worn hulls in an unctuous ooze. An unnamed element, between earth and water.

A new lease of life awaits them, between the end of their seafaring days and the ultimate fate of all things wood or steel. They will see out their days as houseboats. Neither afloat nor ashore. 

Moored in an orderly, yet bohemian, row beneath the wooded bluff. Think Bilbo Baggins' on sea.

Battle scarred veterans are loved and cherished once more.

Reconstructive surgery begins.

Disheveled decks are set to rights.

Wounds are healed.

An indomitable spirit will be required, to fully effect the transformation.

Stargazer lies afloat on her deep water berth, homely, trim and in the prime of her sailing years. The high, wooded, slopes of Woolverstone hill protect her to the south and west. Our bulwark against the coming gale. 

Out of Lockdown 11

 

A crisp bright sunlight spills across the river on this Spring Bank Holiday Saturday morning. Boats forge down, under the Orwell Bridge, leaving the buildings of Ipswich and work day worries behind them. The early birds have the last of the ebb to help them on their way.

Later, the race boats follow. They have the first of the flood to push, as they hurry toward their start line off Collimer Point . Crews ready fragile, but fast, carbon sails, as they go.

I set out to follow the Orwell trail.

Past the ship's graveyard, below the neatly tended houseboats of Pin Mill.

Inland, away from the foreshore, where black headed Brent Geese forage.

Past whitewashed cottages, nestled on the very fringes of the salt marsh.

Over open fields and into a riot of bright blossom.

The path winds through woodland dappled with shade. Young, emerald green, leaves aglow in shafts of sunlight.

To my left, the river glints through a tracery of branches. Framing a gaff cutter on her mooring, sails yet to be bent on for the season. Fresh paint, gleaming, on her topsides.

To my right, bluebells shelter beside the weathered bole of an ancient, bleached, lightening-struck, tree.

The skies begin to darken. The clouds to coalesce and to boil. Thames sailing barge Victor makes her stately way downriver, a stray ray of sunshine reddening the tan of her sails. She has the wind right aft. Only her jib seems to fully draw. And yet, in that magical way of barges, she silently and majestically makes her way over the tide. Slow and inexorable, like the march of time.

I turn for home . Rumbling thunder peals overhead. Rain dances down on Stargazer's deck, as I clamber below, into the shelter of her cabin. An auspicious rainbow momentarily arcs across the sky, beyond the backstay. I make my wish.

Out of Lockdown 10

 

It is high water Harwich, on a big spring tide. The waters lap at the feet of afternoon drinkers on the, once more, crowded terrace of the Butt and Oyster. Boiling black clouds tumble across a forbidding sky. The past weeks of, often strong, north to north east winds have driven a storm surge down the North Sea. Adding height to today's tide.

Spotlight beams of sunlight lance down through gaps in the racing clouds. Highlighting the pink walls of Alma Cottage. Next door neighbour to the village pub.

The grey hulled Cambria has moved round from the scrubbing posts, where she lay yesterday, workmen busy on her hull, to lie companionably astern of, the wine red hulled, Melissa.

I am out on the new dinghy pontoon. Drawn by the vantage point it gives . I snap photographs, when the sun shines . Stand, taking in the view, when the clouds obscure it . During one lull, in photography, I fall into conversation with a couple dressed in canvas smocks and seaboots . They are about to board their dinghy. Excited to be preparing their historic smack for the Bank Holiday races.

Time flies by . And the waters have risen still further. The landward end of the pontoon, I discover, as I attempt to walk ashore, is submerged to knee height, for a distance of around ten metres. I am marooned. Part of the explanation lies with the storm surge. More tellingly, I now remember, high water at Pin Mill is closer to that of Ipswich than to that of Harwich. Half an hour later. It now truly is high water.  I shall have to wait for the ebb to release me. I settle down to enjoy the view.

An oarsman, returning from a day on his boat, spots me. "Are you stuck?" he calls. He rows over to perform a socially distanced rescue . He steps out of his boat, onto the shingle beach, takes hold of the long painter, in one hand, and pushes her back out to me, with the other. The wind carries the empty dinghy neatly to my feet. In I step, to be towed ashore, with a well timed heave on the painter.

Out of Lockdown 9

 

Two Shelduck sun themselves on the edge of the field.

Trees, slowly donning their verdant summer-green coats, shelter the pair from the keen north wind and its wintery breath.

I walk beneath big Suffolk skies, in search of breakfast.

The tide is out at Pin Mill. The barges high and dry.

Long shadows play across the frontage of Alma Cottage, at the top of the slipway. Home to Arthur Ransome, when he wrote "We Didn't Mean to Go to Sea" and "Secret Water,"inspired by his surroundings. For some years the famous cottage's nameplate was removed, to deter tourists. It is good to see it back in its rightful place, above the door.

I press on up the hill, along the catkin hung lane, through the hamlet of Chelmondiston.

Vivid blue forget-me-nots nod in the verges . Unseen birds trill virtuoso solos, from dense hedgerows. One song ends then, after a considered pause, there comes a haunting reply, soaring and pure . A bicycle bell tings once . "Good Morning," the cyclist calls, as she freewheels by.

I emerge on the main street. Past the Corner House pub lies the village Post Office and General Store . Hollingworth's . Its wares spilling out onto the pavement. All things to all people. Within, a lively debate, concerning the merits of on-line ordering for specialist meat cuts, is underway. I duck committing to either side, by explaining that I am a lifelong vegetarian, load my rucksack with the last two granary loaves and depart.

Breakfast has become brunch, by the time I return to Stargazer, at Woolverstone. Hollingworth's granary bread toasts well.

Out of Lockdown 8

 

The setting sun jets fiery tongues of dragon's breath, across the sky, above the moored Pin Mill smacks.

A full moon rises, behind the gnarled limbs of ancient trees, as I make Stargazer fast. The last echoing calls of birdsong fall silent . Leaving only the silvery lap of the tide running melodically along the hull.

A twenty nautical mile broad reach has provided the grand finale to our passage. Riding in from Black Deep, to catch the turn of the tide off the Cork Sand beacon, and on up the pride of the Suffolk Rivers. The River Orwell.

This morning we left Ramsgate, pushing the last of the southbound tide, as a north easterly sea breeze filled in.

Sails just drawing, bow wave beginning to ripple, our speed eases up from two to three knots (over the ground) and then settles at three point four.

The long white snout, of the North Foreland, draws abeam. The tide slackens and then turns in our favour. Stargazer's speed over the ground increases to five knots. Not only is the tide pushing us north but, in doing so, it is increasing our apparent wind speed. Doubly helping us on our way.

Stargazer heels to the making breeze. A feathery foam speckled wake now streaming from her quarter, as she beats powerfully up Knock Deep.

We bear off, across the Long Sand, through Fisherman's Gat. Saluted by serried ranks of silently rotating wind turbines.

We are in the Black Deep now. The northbound tide running hard. Beating in fourteen knots apparent. Making eight knots over the ground, in the crisp spring sunshine, no land in sight. Just us skimming free across wind ruffled waters.

Now comes the moment to ease sheets. To hoist the cruising chute, for the run west into shore. The setting sun casts long shadows from behind our sails. It  leaves one lingering pool of warmth right aft, to starboard . I set the autopilot and sit there, contentedly, to drink a pot of coffee and eat a peanut butter sandwich.

The Orwell flood gathers us up, off Landguard Point, and shepherds us upriver. Amid the silence and soft colours of the Suffolk countryside at sundown.

Out of Lockdown 7

 

A French flagged thirty footer rolls and swoops her way southbound from the Foreland. Mainsail doused, her genoa all she needs to drive her.

If the north wind has dropped, from yesterday, it is not by much. White horses still streak the opaline seas, beneath the whirling blades of the windfarm.

The Frenchman lies rolling uncomfortably off the harbour mouth. Genoa furled, beam on to the waves, lined up on the approach channel. No doubt, in these post Brexit / mid pandemic times, the vhf conversation, with Ramsgate Port Control, is more than the usual brief formality. (I was asked to declare Stargazer's last port, when we called up on Thursday - the first time that has occurred). At last the French boat is given permission to enter shelter. To join a German flagged ketch, in from Ijmuiden, yellow 'Q' (quarantine) flag flying at her cross trees, on the outermost pontoon. With the boat towed in by the RNLI yesterday, moored astern of her.

Tomorrow's forecasts still speak of an easterly force three to five. A fair wind on which to slip out of harbour and to head north.