Snobbery is rife throughout these British Isles. I am sure I even detect a hint of it when members from the south coast write to me about doing a “little slumming” by visiting the east coast with their boats. Make no mistake about it, the Thames Estuary from Aldeburgh in the north to Canvey Island in the west and Ramsgate in the east is the finest area of small boat sailing water in the world. When the millionaires of late Victorian England raced enormous boats, sort of Sir Winston Churchills with half as much sail again, set on a cutter rig, they knew where to come for crews: Essex! When the Prince of Wales built Britannia in 1892, three similar boats were built. The owners wanted the finest crews in the world. All four chose skippers from the tiny village of Rowhedge on the river Colne between Colchester and Brightlingsea. There is something about this magic area, where there is no real coastline, the proportion of land to water decreases gradually as you go eastward, that produced alert, resourceful sailors second to none in the world. One day they would be worrying their way into a tiny creek miles from the open sea, next day they might be out of sight of land at high water, but knowing that all around them banks and shoals would appear as the tide fell. You could never heave to and relax in the manner of the Bristol Channel pilot cutters or the Falmouth boats. These very facts make this area ideal for the small boat man with limited time who wants to pack a lot of interest into a few days sailing. Over and above all things, it is a basically safe area. People do drown themselves, but some do this on village duckponds. Remember how the radio ship Caroline blew ashore in an easterly gale and got off again a day or so later under her own power and went to Holland for repairs. There are not many areas where you can do that. The short seas can pile up quickly with the wind against the tide, but once the wind eases or the banks uncover, it soon calms off again. Last Easter Sunday we left Harty Ferry in the Swale at 0230 in brilliant moonlight and bashed across the Thames to the Crouch against a N.E. 4-5. A tremendous sea was running down the Swin, where we found the wind right on the nose. Next day the wind eased to a zephyr and just 24 hours later I was able to run Shoal Waters straight up onto the Barrow Sand and chase some seals with my camera in water like a millpond.

Being a basically flat area, the winds blow strong and true. You can confidently leave that stinking outboard motor at home, for, if the wind fails and the tide does not yet serve, it is always shallow enough to anchor. All the banks and shoals are marked with a variety of buoys and beacons and nautical bean sticks called “withies” within the creeks, so that for the chap who has spent a winter at navigation classes this area is a paradise. Sometimes you can take six or even eight bearings at a time to get a fix. Getting ashore through the mud can be a problem, and it is better in this area to sleep on the boat rather than in a tent, but if tent you must, choose tides between eight and ten o’clock, for then the saltings do not cover and you can go in on the evening high water and leave with the tide next day. 99% of this mud can be walked through quite comfortably with Wellington boots.

Most harbour entrances are broad and wide with no tricky or dangerous bars to cross. In the area south of Harwich, any boat caught out in rising winds can always find shelter downwind, usually under jib if necessary. When the winds are too strong for coastal work, there is always plenty of sailing within the rivers around high water. The days on which no sailing at all has been possible over the last six years could be counted on my fingers. Ideally, come here when the wind is light and variable. This nearly always means a northerly breeze at night and until ten or eleven in the morning followed by a few hours scorching calm and fine breeze from the S.E. in the afternoon. On days like this, the Thames estuary is the finest place in the world for the small boat sailor!

P.S. where exactly is this place called Cowes?