Dear Vyv

[NigeCh]

There's nothing wrong with east coast sailing - It's a matter of perspective. When you have an old hand say "Aha we're rounding this buoy and all we've got to do now is make the transit with the tree stump on the horizon .... Pass me the binoculars ...

.... Aw shit! Some bugger's cut down the tree!" then you'll know that that's east coast off-shore sailing.

BUT, east coast sailing is what you make it: If you get away from the grey-brown waters and go up some creek you'll be welcomed by the east coast mafia, and believe me there is no mafia like it .... Tollesbury is good but Rocheford is better etc.

Your grebe is that you once sailed out of some of the finest waters of the UK and yearn to return to those waters, seas and clear clean seas, where the mountains that come down to the sea form a backdrop that have no equal apart from west coast Scotland, you'll yearn once again for the shades of dawnlight that mark the Carneddau rising above Bangor pier ... and so out to Trwyn Du and then once again into a real sea.

It's time you quit €land and returned to the seas that you know and love the best.

Cheers,

Nige

(Rowen Bay - On the Strait)

<hr width=100% size=1>

 

[charles_reed]

and which varietal of grape moved you to such heights of rhetoric Nige?

<hr width=100% size=1>

 

[NigeCh]

Neither grape, nor barley

It's word pictures from my diaries with pen and ink sketches that are later translated into paintings.

Here's one for the East Coast:

It's dawn. There's a low tenuous mist and a gentle cold air that rustles the grasses on an ever expanding horizon over the salt marshes. You hear the call of the curlew. It's October and all is quiet. You watch the water trickle in and rise silently over the ooze as it lifts the wooden boats from their mud berths. Your nose quickens to the smell of woodsmoke and new baked bread coming from a small huddle of brick and red tiled houses set further up the creek by the golden leafed woods that reach down into the glassy mirrored waters that echo shiplap on shiplap, tile on tile, hull on hull, mast on mast, each a layer on a pastel layer as a set of slow autumn ripples in that low and rising pale grey mist. You hear the creak of ropes on block, of hoops on mast as a tan gaff sail is inched ever higher till the peak spreads the canvas and then the tan mizzen and all is done to no spoken words ... The anchor is raised and a Thames barge silently glides out in majesty into the rising sun upon the quiet murky waters where a timeless land and a timeless sea now have no horizon ... The curlew calls again and breakfast beckons.

 

[Richard_Blake]

Re: ...and all is done...

To no spoken words? Of course not. Crew and charterers have all got thumping hangovers...

<hr width=100% size=1>LowTech

 

[vyv_cox]

I'm flattered that you name me in a post title! You have probably come very near to the truth, though.

Since living in Holland we have taken the opportunity to cruise areas that we had previously not been able to reach in a typical period of leave. Having gone south-west as far as Jersey and north-east to the Baltic, we turned our attention to the UK east coast. Although we had made several crossings to Dover and Ramsgate, our knowledge of further north was non-existent south of the Forth.

Perhaps the glamorous view of Thames Estuary cruising portrayed in YM and other publications enhanced our expectations. I can only say that, once we turned the corner at about Harwich, we unreservedly detested the place. I apologise to Violetta, she is quite correct, there is only one power station on the north side, although there is another on the Medway. It just seemed that there were more.

We didn't enjoy the sailing, we saw no views of anything, wherever we went we had mud banks on either one side of us or both. The Crouch almost all the way up to Burnham is just like a canal, with mud banks, of course. Bradwell was the pits. Never again. And that definitely goes for Jill: I think she hated it all more than I did.

My last season in the North Sea, then it's back to the west. Definitely the side where I feel most comfortable.

<hr width=100% size=1>

 

[oldharry]

Re: Neither grape, nor barley

Worthy of the swatchways Nige - but thats only one side of it. Last time I was there the F9 off the N Sea was straight off the Arctic Ice, the roar of the rollers on the shingle was enough to strike fear into stoutest Marine Insurers heart, and the rain was coming in horizontally at about 30mm an hour.

" A N. Sea ferry drives its stubby nose out into the boiling spume and spray as the rain beats on the churning waters where a timeles land and a timeless sea have no horizon (vis down to 150 metres). SWMBO calls yet again, and the fireside beckons - irresistibly."

<hr width=100% size=1>

 

[charles_reed]

Beautiful word picture

But I note - not from seaward.

Perhaps V
yv has a point?...

<hr width=100% size=1>

 

[AndrewB]

Gosh! What poetry! (And sea pie).

Its not curlews but oystercatchers. Am I alone in being irritated by their piercing cry at dusk and dawn across the Estuary? Like jet-ski's, this nuisance has increased rapidly in recent years.

You can eat all the sea pie you like for breakfast, Nige. Then there might be a few more oysters for mine.

<hr width=100% size=1>

 

[vyv_cox]

Re: Gosh! What poetry! (And sea pie).

Oystercatchers do have a somewhat piercing cry, made more obvious when they indulge in their (mating?) ritual of fluttering in a group, shrieking loudly. Can't say I find it particularly annoying, though.

On the other hand, I can think of few more beautiful calls than that of the curlew. I think it's the male that issues that bubbling, drawn out sound that is so evocative of early summer.

<hr width=100% size=1>

 

[DeeGee]

Re: Gosh! What poetry! (And sea pie).

At the risk of getting hung drawn and q'd... I spent last weekend on the Solent, and marvelled at the splendid choice of places to go. My host grumbled that he had been everywhere again and again, and anyway there were too many grockles (?) - I think he meant holidaymakers - around. By the end of the weekend, I still thought there must be plenty of nice places to go, but I was saddened by the loss of weight in my purse! £27 a night at Beaulieu, very pretty, but also rather pricey, facilities nowhere as good as Wolverstone. £6 for about an hour and a half at Shepherd's (?) at Cowes... £6 gets you a day at Pin Mill, and PM is just as lovely as Beaulieu.
Now, I for one do not find the E Coast v beautiful etc, but if you like sailing, and having to plan your passage carefully, and enjoy perhaps more dry and fair-wind sailing days than most other places, then the ECoast is quite a fair place to be. ((( And it is far nicer to your purse!! )))

<hr width=100% size=1>Black Sugar - the sweetest of all

 

[vyv_cox]

Re: Gosh! What poetry! (And sea pie).

Of course, you are right. Everybody gets to love the place that they sail and to accept its challenges. Perhaps my problem, as Nigel suggests, is that I was based previously on Anglesey, which has just about everything that the cruising yachtsman could desire, except possibly some rather better weather! Weekends when I spent any money on berthing were rare indeed, such are the advantages of sailing around a reasonable-sized island well equipped with anchorages

Having now spent seven years in the North Sea or inland Holland, the Thames estuary came as just too much of the same thing, but worse!

<hr width=100% size=1>

 

[AndrewB]

So why is it innundated by the Dutch right now?

nm

 

[vyv_cox]

See my reply to Dutch Invasion (nm)

.

<hr width=100% size=1>

 

[Twister_Ken]

Oystercatchers in hot water

The cry of the oystercatcher is close to being identical to the shriek of my engine overheat alarm. If I ever catch an oystercatcher (oysters as bait - in or out of shell?) I'll change its impellor.

<hr width=100% size=1><A target="_blank" HREF=http://www.writeforweb.com/twister1>Let's Twist Again</A>

 

[Sybarite]

Re: So why is it innundated by the Dutch right now?

Jacques Brel wrote a song about "my flat country". He was speaking about Belgium but the same applies for The Netherlands. The East coast is a natural destination but if you are not used to anything better...

John

<hr width=100% size=1>

 

[Violetta]

Lovely picture, Nige

But is it the East Coast of the mind, or of the world? The houses sound like Orford - or could it be Butley? (the bread smells and woodsmoke also figure) Where you can see houses near the creeks (very few places) they are mostly pastel, not brick. And there are also very few places where woods stretch down to the water. Sounds as if it has to be Suffolk to me. The Alde above Aldburgh, maybe.

So come on - spit it out....where is it? Or is it a collage?

It's true, though - October is an especially magical time in the rivers and creeks.

<hr width=100% size=1>

 

[Violetta]

The low slow trill

Both genders do it. It's a contact cry when they are feeding - all year round.

<hr width=100% size=1>

 

[NigeCh]

It\'s a spirit of Wotton

It is a collage of memories that were based on a set of notes and sketches. It's a summation of early morning walks from the Orwell in the north to the Medway in the south ... and all based on having arrived from the sea.

It's a strange land is the East Coast. It has no horizons from the sea, but when you explore the rivers and backwaters you come to places that are places out of time; places that seem as though they are part of yesteryear and are still hidden from the hurly burly of our rushing lifes.

Yes, Vi, it's a fiction: It's the Thames Barge raising anchor in the pool off Brightlingsea; it's the woods coming down to the water by Pin Mill; the houses next the creek is a romanticised view of Wivenhoe; the salt marshes are everywhere; the cry of the curlew was the ploughed fields next Heybridge; the fresh bread was Burnham and the woodsmoke is a reverie.

Put them all together, you can create something that you can only see as a sea dreamers view of what it is that makes the hidden secrets of an area become one in the mind's eye.

The painting is all but done - It's neither Constable nor Turner. Its but lazy colours on a lazy background where the barge with its dun drab sails is gliding away out of the river into an October east coast dawn.

<hr width=100% size=1>

 

[Violetta]

Sounds nice, Nige

Shall we be able to see it? Will it be for sale? (Would I be able to afford it?)

<hr width=100% size=1>