Our 12 foot Tideway Baggywrinkle spent much of last June and July on holiday with a friend on the East Coast, so she managed to make a surprise appearance at a couple of East Coast Rallies. The friend's name is Ambrose of Milan but she lives at Chelmondiston in Suffolk, which sailors know as Pin Mill. I met the owners of Ambrose at a conference on a subject far removed from sailing. When we were chatting over lunch, I discovered that the people sitting opposite me owned a Tideway, one nearly twenty years younger than Baggywrinkle, and almost the last real wooden Tideway to be built. The conference was forgotten. The university dining hall dissolved into a shining seascape of estuaries and swatchways as we swapped yarns about sailing and lost ourselves in the dreamy fascination of a gunter rig and a clinker hull on lonely waters.

I had always intended to visit Pin Mill ever since I had read as a child the two books that Arthur Ransome set in the area, but a nagging fear that I would find that the surrounding waters were now crowded and spoilt had kept me away. But when we took Baggywrinkle to Pin Mill to visit Ambrose we were delighted to discover that the region has miraculously escaped the excesses of boating and housing development. We were enchanted by Pin Mill itself. Thames Barges still dry out on its expansive hard for repairs; you can tie up your dinghy to one of the posts to visit the Butt and Oyster for refreshment and, like generations of seafarers before, you can peer over your pint of 'Tolly' at the vessels lying against the scrubbing posts, at the motley houseboats along the shore, and eye up the passing craft.

David and Trudi, Ambrose's owners, had never taken her out of the sheltered Suffolk estuaries. David was inspired by Baggy's coastal passages to and from the DCA Walton Backwaters rally to do something similar in Ambrose if we would accompany him. He leafed through the Almanac and found a date when the tide served for a passage from the Orwell to the Deben and insisted that we came down to see them again then. So the middle of July found us once again at Chelmondiston, wheeling Baggy out of her holiday home under the trees in David's garden for the promised coastal passage. The trees were swaying in a brisk Southwesterly.

"Looks like a fair wind up the coast", remarked David as he hitched up Ambrose.

"Nasty chop in Harwich harbour with the wind against the tide", we responded moodily, as we remembered another Sou'westerly and our over-exciting arrival back in Harwich from the Walton Backwaters rally with a gale brewing, and the vicious sea at the confluence of the ebb streams from the Stour and Orwell. In the end we gratefully accepted a tow into Shotley marina from a 50 foot ketch that was coming in under power to shelter from the gale. The memory of the subsequent late breakfast in Shotley marina was pleasant, that of the passage across Harwich harbour, less so.

We suppressed our memories, and launched Baggywrinkle and Ambrose from the hard at Pin Mill just after high water. The wind was fairly light in the shelter of the cliff, but the young ebb helped our little craft through the moored boats and down the estuary towards Harwich and the sea. Approaching Harwich the Orwell swings to the south, and soon both Tideways were tacking briskly back and forth down a long bleak reach bounded by marshland. Slowly the great gantries of the Felixstowe docks drew nearer, Harwich harbour opened out ahead of us, and the waves started to show their teeth against the strengthening tide. We plunged into the steep seas, throwing up sheets of spray. Baggywrinkle is famously wet in these conditions and my crew Helen pumped intermittently to keep the spray from accumulating in the bottom-boards. Ambrose, newer, lighter and with only David on board, seemed still to be fairly dry. She leaped from one crest to the next, heaving half the length of her keel out of the water.

We stopped off at the pontoons off Shotley for a brew. As I was worried about running aground outside the dredged channel, I did not take a wide enough sweep up to the Shotley pontoon and so we had insufficient speed for the final approach. A sudden gust brought Baggy to a stop a couple of feet short. It is at moments like this that a valiant crew can earn their stowage space. Fearful that if we fell off to leeward our mast would foul the overhead walkway of the lock into Shotley marina, Helen quickly scrambled onto the foredeck so she could leap for the pontoon with the painter.

"Don't fall in!" I called, but she was gone. All that was left was something spluttering in the water out of sight under the bows. I made my way forward to find Helen bobbing about in the waves, holding grimly to the pontoon with one hand and the painter with the other. (Her courage was to be admired, but a couple of strokes with the paddle would have done the job just as well). We had sorted ourselves out and broached the thermos when Ambrose swept up to the pontoon in an exemplary fashion. David drank his coffee whilst I pulled down a reef in Baggy's mainsail. David swears that he did not notice us reefing, even though we discussed with him the strengthening wind, now backing southerly - that it would probably be even stronger in the harbour mouth, and that hitting the seas a little slower would probably keep more of them out of the boat.

The problem of Harwich harbour is not just a nasty wind-over-tide chop, but that the recommended route for pleasure craft is to keep well over to the western side, away from the deep water channel busy with container ships and North Sea ferries. On the shallow banks outside the channel the incoming seas are close and steep, and an outgoing tide trips them up so their tops curl and break. I knew that the recommended route would entail a long beat to windward in these nasty waters so I had suggested to David that we could probably cut across to Landguard Point as soon as we were clear of the Felixstowe container berths. David strongly disagreed: if it was marked on the chart that yachts should keep over to the west until they were clear to the south of the deep water channel, then that was the route we should take, even though our eventual course was to the north. I bowed to local knowledge. The chart I have beside me as I write is still marked up with the course Baggywrinkle grimly followed, plunging on south into the steep, hissing seas at the harbour mouth. Ambrose, under full sail, drew gradually ahead of us and soon the two Tideways became separated.

Suddenly Helen shouted: "David is heading for the point!" I looked astern. Sure enough, Ambrose had abandoned the wet beat southwards and was already out of the steep seas of the shallows, screaming away from us on a beam reach, cutting straight across the deep water channel for Landguard Point.

"Ready about!" We climbed up a steep sea, dived through the crest, swung quickly onto the other tack before the next sea could reach us and paid off onto a reach to follow Ambrose. She was way ahead of us in the middle of the deep water channel. Just to seaward of her, a huge container ship was steaming slowly in from the sea accompanied by a brace of harbour launches. "We'll never be able to get across before that thing gets to us! - We'll have to hang around until it's gone past! - Ready about!"

We beat back and forth in the confused water as the container ship slid slowly past like a cliff. I dared not risk a reach, as the seas were so steep that they threatened to turn us over if we put ourselves beam on to them, so we continued to beat on southwards. It was now full ebb, and the tide was sweeping us out of the estuary and into even bigger seas. Baggy's crews are used to getting wet, but now the waves were beginning to break right over the boat and hit me in the stern!

“Should we turn back?” asked Helen. “We can't, we promised that we'd see David safe to Woodbridge: we've got to get after him!”

At length the container ship cleared the channel, and we could bear off again for Landguard Point. Ambrose had disappeared round the corner long before. We scudded across the waves, luffing into the worst of them, turning to take others on the quarter and rolling heavily.

Once we had rounded Landguard Point the wind would be with the tide, so we expected to find quieter seas. (A strange phenomenon of the Suffolk coast is that the ebb tide runs northwards). We were disappointed. On the shallows of Felixstowe ledge the seas were little better than those in Harwich harbour, but we bore away regardless and set off after Ambrose's tan sails, a speck in the distance far to the north. The steep seas rose under our stern and thrust us onward in pursuit.

That spring I had finally got round to sorting out a nagging problem with Baggy's rudder. The lifting blade had an annoying tendency to stick in the raised position, and I was tired of sailing with one wet sleeve after pushing the blade down by hand. Also even when it was raised to its full extent the blade could foul the bottom in shallow waters, which meant that the rudder had to be shipped if Baggy was to be beached. I took the rudder apart, sanded down the blade so that it moved easily, and adjusted its shape so that it would lift higher. I bench tested it and it worked perfectly. Unfortunately I had forgotten that the heavy rudder blade would have a positive buoyancy when immersed in water, and we were soon to discover that sometimes when Baggywrinkle was sailing very fast, the shock chord was not powerful enough to hold the blade down and it would bob up to its new higher position leaving us effectively rudderless. It had happened once or twice on our way back from the Walton Backwaters rally, and now it happened again off Landguard Point as we strained to catch Ambrose. As our stern rose to a sea, the helm suddenly became heavy and Baggy started to broach. An urgent drag at the tiller brought her reluctantly back on course, but then she threatened to swing too far the other way and gybe! I forced her back, then leaned over the stern and thrust the rudder blade down again. I reached into my pocket, grabbed at a small coin and jammed it into the gap between the blade and the stock. The blade stayed down. We sailed on.

After a while the coin was shaken out by the vibrations of the blade, the blade swung up and once again we threatened to broach. I forced another coin into place, but eventually that too joined Neptune. Soon I began to run short of small change and larger denomination coins had to be donated to the sea.

"If we go on like this we'll be broke long before we reach the Deben - we must slow down!" We dropped the deeply reefed mainsail and continued under jib alone. (David, surfing along goose-winged far ahead of us, saw our distant red sail vanish, and was convinced we had capsized.) The long sea front of Felixstowe slid slowly past about half a mile off our port bow.

We arrived off the Deben bar at low water as we had planned, so we would avoid the strong tides that sweep through the narrow entrance to the river. Ambrose had long ago disappeared. The distant speck of her tan sail had turned out to sea just before she shaped a course in towards the shore and we had puzzled at this action. When we got close to the bar, we discovered why: a long line of white water was breaking on a shingle bank that stretched far out to sea, blocking our path. The only way round was to sail out to the end of it, come round onto the other tack and sail back in to the shore on the other side, and to do that we would need the mainsail again. We lay to, raised the mainsail, and bore off for the end of the shingle bank. Baggywrinkle breasted the waves matter-of-factly, like the sea boat that she is, I jibed her round smartly in a flattish patch between seas, and she brought us safely in again on the far side of the bank. She reached in towards the shore at great speed, as we strained to make out the leading marks at the mouth of the Deben.

"Can you see the marks? The far one's a red square and the other's a red triangle on a white square - we must keep them in line." "Yes, there, just over the port bow!"

As I leant forward to see where Helen was pointing, the rudder blade lifted again and Baggy swept up into the wind, her sails shaking. I fed another coin into the rudder; we bore off and sailed on. The language on board finally began to deteriorate. Perhaps I was distracted by the faulty rudder, but as we closed with the shore we suddenly noticed that somehow the leading marks had moved apart. We were to starboard of the transit, and a line of breakers now separated us from the channel. We were becoming embayed! I remembered reading of boats lost on the treacherous bars of the East Coast rivers, their hulls pounded to pieces on the shingle. We hardened up the sheets and aimed desperately back for the channel, straight into the white water. There was a crunch as the steel centreplate hit the bottom. "Haul up the plate just enough to clear! We must keep on!"

Tideways can work to windward even with the plate up, (one of the wonders of a traditional hull form), but not in heavy weather; we had to keep as much plate down as possible or we would be pushed sideways onto the shingle banks that stood clear out of the broken water to leeward.

Crunch! - The plate hit again. Helen hauled it up a little more; it grated against the shingle one more time, and then we were clear. We paid off the wind into the channel. Soon it turned to port and we passed into the shelter of the high sea wall at Felixstowe ferry. The water became flat, the wind became a pleasant breeze, and we rounded the point in fine style to find David standing expectantly beside Ambrose at the foot of the slipway.

"Hi!" called David, who had waited impatiently for nearly an hour, "Wasn't that fun! Are we going up to Woodbridge now?"

"We're not going anywhere without some tea!" we called back, and stomped ashore to the tea shop.

Sometime later, rather drier, full of tea and toasted sandwiches, we returned to the boats to sail on to Woodbridge. It was idyllic. The same wind that had been a beat out of the Orwell was now a fair wind for the Deben. With the young flood we reached up past the picturesque hamlet of Ramsholt, past the red cliffs by Prettyman's point, round the slow bend by Waldringfield and into the delightful upper reaches of the Deben. A seal followed us for some time, occasionally sounding so that we thought that we had lost him, but then surfacing again somewhere else.

Just below Woodbridge the river takes a great sweep round to the Southwest. In virtually any wind this bend means a beat at some point, and it so irritated the barge crews that the good people of Woodbridge dug a short cut through the saltings. It is called Loder's Cut, and it is remarkable. You follow the withies, straight for a seemingly unbroken salting, then suddenly the cut opens up, a narrow passage through the mud. When you emerge at the other end, there is Woodbridge bang on the bow. We sailed Baggywrinkle up to the little hard, just below the white weather boarded tide mill. As we landed in the evening sun, we saw David miss stays and run aground in the soft mud a few yards astern of us.

"Serves you right!" we called across cheerfully.