- in a 12' Tideway Dinghy

I never sailed on the Humber as much as I ought to have done. Just take a look at it on any map of Britain: a huge estuary biting deep into the North East coast, and the centre of an extensive network of canals and navigable rivers. Uniquely in England, the economy of the North East is still oriented towards inland water transport. Many of the coasters that ply the Humber are bound for distant upriver quays on the Trent, or they will take their cargoes up the Ouse to the inland port of Selby and even York, and there is still serious commercial barge traffic on the larger canals.

These are waters vastly more intricate, challenging and exciting than the yachting honeypots of the South Coast, but if you stand on the Humber Bridge on a sunny August weekend, you will be lucky if you see a single yacht. There are no sports boats, no jet skies and no dinghies - only the coasters and barges quietly going about their business. In comparison to the over-exposed Solent and the cramped harbours at Poole and Chichester, the Humber is vast and deserted.

When we lived in Sheffield, the Humber and its surrounding rivers were easily our nearest sailing waters, only an hour and a half's drive away to the East. Yet so often we chose to drive for three or four hours in the other direction instead, across the Pennines to the Lancashire coast, the Lake District or even North Wales. Why did we neglect these fascinating waters? Well, the Humber has some problems for the dinghy sailor. Its tides are swift, its waters muddy and shallow, and its tidal overfalls are so predictably pesky that they have been dignified with names, like the notorious 'Hessle Whelps'. Its main channel shifts about so often that Associated British Ports, the port authority, do not bother fussing about with chart revisions, they simply issue a completely new chart of the estuary every two months. And the tidal range is huge, over seven metres at springs, which means that the various havens along its shores are only accessible for a couple of hours or so at High Water. For at least half a tide your boat is either sunk up to her marks in the glutinous mud of one of the havens, or you are out on the Humber in an accelerating tidal stream with no refuge available for at least six hours. So a sail in the estuary is a choice between a quick hop from one haven to another around High Water, or a serious expedition taking in a whole tide.

As a compensation for these difficulties and for the rather bleak scenery of the lower reaches, the Humber was once surrounded by a mass of interesting reedy creeks. Even as late as the end of the last century these provided wharves for the Humber Keels to trade to, and an interesting environment for the ancestors of modern dinghy cruisers to explore in their canoe yawls. But major land drainage works have hemmed in the estuary behind straight embankments, and sluices have been built across the mouths of the creeks. The tidal havens that remain are truncated shadows of their former selves, cut off from the pretty towns and villages they once served - just a break in the line of the embankment and a grubby dribble of water leading to a concrete sluice.

Yet none of these are the main problem with the Humber. The main problem with the Humber is getting afloat at all. Leisure boating is such an unknown quantity on these waters that in all of this huge estuary there is not one decent slipway. The nearest good one is meant to be in Goole docks, but that is ten miles up the River Ouse and the wrong side of a ship lock, (though it would be worth considering if you were bringing your boat here for a week). The Humber Yawl Club have a couple of very nice looking slipways at Brough on the north bank and Winteringham on the south, but they only just about get wet for a split second at high water neaps and anyway visitors are discouraged from using them. The Humber Mouth Yacht Club are more welcoming, but they are way out to the east on a particularly unfriendly bit of coast. Also their slipway is again only useful around high water, and you would want to launch near low water to catch the tide up the estuary from here. Then there is Horsewash Slope in Hull, but it is tucked under a timber jetty, has a sharp 90 degree bend at the bottom followed by a six foot vertical drop onto soft mud, is prone to be blocked by shipping lying alongside and I wouldn't touch it with a barge pole.

Thus to serve the whole estuary we are left a choice of launching off the shingle at Hessle Beach, just under the Humber Bridge, or the steep slipway at Barrow Haven. Of these, we used to reckon that Hessle Beach was not a bad place to launch. Although the shingle is rather difficult to roll a trailer over and a nasty fetch can build up onto the beach if there is any south in the wind, Hessle Beach is the only place suitable for a day sail on the estuary, as it is available for six hours or so on each tide.

So one Saturday last May my friend Richard Bramley and I took Baggywrinkle off to Hessle for a routine weekend out on the Humber. Nothing special, nothing dramatic, just a simple sail up the estuary to a creek for the night, and then back the next day. But when we arrived at Hessle Beach we found that the concrete ramp on to the foreshore had been efficiently chained off. Painted on the ground was 'Humber Rescue Only' in large letters. Nearby was a flashy new shed with the words 'Humber Rescue' on it too. Through its windows we could see a Landrover and an inshore rescue boat mounted on a trailer, but there was no one about to plead with for a key to the padlocks. We looked at each other in despair. We had a boat full of cruising gear, the weather looked good, the water glistened as invitingly as the muddy waters of the Humber ever glisten, but there seemed to be no way we could get out on to them. So we decided to drive into Hull and ask for advice at the marina, which is a converted fish dock, (the once great fishing fleets of Hull evaporated after the Cod Wars). "Hessle Beach" they suggested. We told them the sad news. They told us that Humber Rescue were good chaps. We said they'd be a better lot if they gave people half a chance of getting into a position from which we might need to be rescued. Prevention may be better than cure, but pinching the only slipway was ridiculous!

Barrow Haven

Having drawn a blank at Hull, we crossed the great bridge to the southern bank of the estuary and drove along to Barrow Haven, our last desperate option if we were to get afloat at all. Barrow Haven is probably the pleasantest Humber haven, but it is still simply a little muddy creek below a sluice in the remotest corner of the back of beyond - not that this stopped someone from buying it few years ago with the wildly optimistic idea of setting up a marina. This fellow is now far away, (keeping one step ahead of his creditors, they say), and Barrow Haven looks much as it always did: a few fishing boats lying against timber staging, a couple of tumble-down tin sheds, a pile of timber on the quayside of the adjacent timber yard, and not a soul about.

A few years before, when I visited Barrow Haven to case the joint, I had decided that only a maniac would use its slipway. It is unused and neglected, narrow and inconvenient, steep as the Eiger and caked in soft Humber mud - but yet it is a slipway, and today it was our last chance of getting afloat. So we stationed Richard's vehicle at the top of the ramp and eased the trailer gently down on the end of a long rope. As there was no way anyone could remain standing on the soft mud which coated the concrete, I had to travel down the ramp by riding on the drawbar of the trailer. Meanwhile Richard paid out the rope around a couple of turns on the ball hitch. So abrupt was the change in gradient at the top of the slipway that I had to call out directions to him as I went down, as he could not see where the boat was from where he was standing. The logistics of getting the boat off the trailer into the water, both of us into the boat and the trailer back to the top of the ramp were rather like the sort of test they give potential army officers, but at length we managed to sail gently towards the mouth of the haven, while Richard washed the mud off himself and the boat. It was now 1500 hours. High water at Immingham was not until 1700, (and later further up the estuary), so the flood was still thundering past as we emerged into the wide waters of the estuary and turned towards the Humber Bridge. The wind was a S 4-5, right on the beam. We passed close to the entrance to Barton Haven, where a couple of old sailing keels could be seen moored at the boat yard. Only half an hour later we were off Chowder Ness and the wind had veered to the SW, causing us to start tacking and setting up a typically confused Humber popple in the shallowing water.

"Why do I always get sopping wet sailing with Bully Barnes?" asked Richard rhetorically, wiping the spume out of his eyes. This was an unkind comparison of me to the notorious Bully Forbes of the clipper Marco Polo, who drove his vessel hard and used to stand guard over the sheets with a shot gun when frightened passengers begged him to reduce sail. As a certain amount of mild mutiny is fairly normal aboard Baggywrinkle I ignored this quip, but cut inside Read's Island to avoid the worst of the chop. We sailed past the sea lock into the River Ancholme at Ferriby Sluice and the dominant cement works beside it and then we took a long tack over to the other bank of the estuary to follow the northern shore past Brough. This part of the Humber is rather attractive, with green undulating hills on both banks and red brick farms and villages glimpsed between groups of trees.

We were looking for the entrance to Crabley Creek, one of the last real creeks on the Humber, and too small and winding to interest the few yachts that venture into these waters. It is a narrow channel cutting into the saltings and difficult to see from the estuary. Once we had located it and got inside, we spent some time rowing around and sounding with an oar until we found a flattish bit of bottom to settle on for the night. The log records that we arrived at 1715, so we had only been sailing for a little over two hours, but had covered nearly 13 miles.

Meanwhile a bunch of yachts issued forth out of Brough and proceeded to have a quick race around the estuary. It had to be swift one, because the Humber Yawl Club's main haven is only accessible for a couple of hours around High Water. There were no Victorian canoe yawls, for they gave them up long since - they've got boring plastic yachts now just like everyone else. They shot across the estuary in a pack, to be scattered by an incoming cargo ship, which sounded its horn and steamed imperiously straight through the middle of them. But by the time we had finished cooking our supper the estuary was empty again and we were alone with the sheep, the sea birds and the wind rustling in the reed beds.

Richard likes his booze, so we left Baggywrinkle to settle on the mud and walked across the rich arable land behind the dyke to Broomfleet. Although the village is wonderfully remote and attractive, the pub is a real dive and the beer was keg, so after only a pint each we walked back via Weighton Lock to examine this interesting eighteenth century structure - which gives access from the Humber into the obscure Market Weighton Canal. A plaque revealed that it had been newly restored, and formally reopened only the weekend before.

Absurdly early the next morning we popped our heads out of the awning to find that Sunday was very wet and cold, and the same SW5 was blowing straight into the entrance to the creek. The plan was to use the morning HW to get out of the creek, and then to sail across to Winteringham and stay there until the evening high tide. We would then race back to Barrow Haven, with the aim of getting the boat out of the water before that haven was left dry by the ebbing tide. All this meant an early start, so we had the cover down and were under way by 0700, beating out of the narrow entrance of the creek into a vicious chop.

It was a grim business tacking across the estuary. The great light floats that mark the navigation channel would suddenly appear out of the rain and race towards us with bones in their teeth. We ended up plodding along under fully reefed main and no jib. With this rig Baggywrinkle is painfully slow, and Richard grumbled that he had got sopping wet again. But the swift Humber tide did its usual work and we were at the entrance of Winteringham Haven by 0800. We tied up to the pontoon and Baggywrinkle quickly sank down into the soft mud as the ebbing tide fled the haven and our stove boiled the water for breakfast tea.

I am afraid that was that for sailing that day. As the wind was still a stout SW 5 we decided not to risk some calamity on the way to Barrow Haven that would leave us stuck out on the Humber in a ebbing tide and fading light. Also we feared the prospect of that awful slipway again. So we arranged with the good folk of the Winteringham outpost of the Humber Yawl Club that we could haul out at their slipway instead. We spent the morning chatting with various boat owners about the perils of sailing the Humber and in exploring the village, before we caught a taxi back to Barrow Haven to fetch our car and trailer.

When we got to Barrow Haven we found it filled by a newly arrived coaster, squatting on the mud by the timber wharf like a huge cuckoo in a small nest. It could have been touch and go getting Baggywrinkle past her huge steel sides, so we felt rather relieved that we did not need to. And we were confident that there would be many future occasions to explore the fascinating waters of the North East. Yet it was not to be. That brief sail was to be Baggywrinkle’s last visit to those taxing waters. Not long afterwards Helen and I decided to move house to Somerset, and the Humber was no longer our local sailing area.

But I hope I can interest other members in the neglected waterways around the Humber Estuary. I have not made light of the problems. These are serious waters, to be attempted only by the experienced, but they are as fascinating as any I know. If you like honest sailing waters and abhor everything yachty and pretentious, then the Humber may be for you.

Baggywrinkle is only a twelve-footer, and she is really rather small to cruise the Humber effectively. In particular her transom is too narrow to accommodate a permanently mounted outboard motor, and outboard power always available on demand can be so helpful in confined and strongly tidal waterways - indeed I would consider essential for the exploration of rivers like the Hull, Trent and Ouse, as the commercial traffic fairly clips along them, and you may need to get out of the way in a hurry. But if you have something like a Wayfarer, a Drascombe or a small cabin boat, fitted with a decent and reliable outboard, you could have many enjoyable seasons of varied exploration on the waterways of the North East.

I shall return, when I too have such a boat. The following are essential on the Humber:

Pilot ‘The Tidal Havens of the Wash and Humber’ Henry Irving (Imray) Inland Waterways Guide ‘North East Waterways’ Derek Bowskill (Imray) Charts The current River Humber Chart issued by Associated British Ports (two sheets), as well as the appropriate Admiralty Charts for your intended cruise.