I was trying out new sails on one blustery, chilly Easter cruise. My heavy old boat had been slow to come about with the small foresail she had when I bought her, and I was eager to discover how much better she would sail with the much larger one I had just had made. I had to leave Levington Creek one morning in a wind south of east - it was blowing flurries of sleet over the water. It would be a fair wind up the Orwell to Pin Mill, but first I had to leave Levington Creek. I tried it under foresail alone as an experiment, and to my delight I found that I could manoevre easily down the winding creek with a wind forward of the beam.

Further false confidence in the helpfulness of my fine new foresail was added when it brought me out of a squall in which Widsith, with her long straight keel, had refused to come up into the wind under full sail. Once the mainsail was dropped she became manageable at once.

I tried it once too often, of course. Coming down the Deben from Waldringfield I found the mast bent like a bow with reefed main set, and so I lowered it and relied on the foresail again. I had the wind in my favour as well as the tide - it was a north wind. This was just right for the reach below Ramsholt, but I looked optimistically at the lie of` the next reach on the chart. The north wind soon put me over onto the south-west shore - too late I realised that only the mainsail would get me back. I thought an oar would do the trick - wrongly.

Widsith is a heavy boot to row. The shore of the Deben is composed of glutinous mud. The reach is a lonely one, bordered with marshes, so that there was no one to watch what must have been an amusing sight. I leapt overboard (as always when I run aground) and heaved the boat round to face offshore. I then leapt aboard, seized the oars, and rowed hard - but before I was even in a position to row, the boat would be back ashore again. I repeated the manoevre many times. The sails, hastily stowed, became wet and muddy. It was raining so hard that I did not notice how soaked I was from my plunges into the muddy shallows. Crabwise, Widsith drifted with the tide along the shore towards Felixstowe Ferry. The voyage was finally completed under oars when my father, who was waiting for me there, came wading up river to help. With one at the oars and the other shoving it was simple enough to get afloat.

But now I no longer sail in winding rivers without a vestige of mainsail set, or ready to set, before the lee shore is seen to be approaching.