Blustery, even boisterous conditions at times cut down our sailing at the May Day Bank Holiday. With a high pressure system in charge, we should have had three glorious days, and if we’d been able to postpone the Bank Holiday until the middle of next week, we’d probably have had it, judging by the forecast!!

As it was, the wind was in probably the worst quarter — from the northeast — blowing straight in at never less than a hefty F4 and at times, higher. No one got away without a good deep reef. In addition, for much of the day, the tides were ebbing which meant that the wind over tide conditions made everyone feel more vulnerable than perhaps they were. Accordingly, sailing was confined to within the Backwaters themselves

For several, this was the shakedown cruise of 2001, and the conditions found a few weaknesses and, not surprisingly, brought about some gear failures. However, all members ended up happily full of food and alcohol on the Saturday evening and slept well in marina berths, despite the cold and wind. But with no respite from the strong breezes on Sunday, everyone decided to pull out and return home, presumably on the basis that he who fights the breeze and runs away, lives to sail another day, perhaps.

Those attending were, Charles Proudfoot in his Roamer, George Saffrey in his Cruz, Dave Jennings in his Highlander 14 and Paul Robinson in his Cornish Cobble, together with a friend, Trevor. We were also pleased to see Jeff and Penny Darby who, having no trailer for their Lynx 14 — and the conditions most unsuitable for sailing round — came by road to see us all.

The Genie and I enjoyed everyone’s company and hope it won’t be too long before we all meet up again. Ted Jones

Deben 30th June - July 1st

Last year the weather for the Deben cruise was so bad that no one launched. This year the sunshine returned and the Sunday of the weekend dawned brilliantly.

The sailing had started at about eight o’clock on Friday 29 June when Paul in his Torch Tyne and Alison Constantine In her Mirror Reflection departed Woodbridge on a close reach in light winds, for Felixstowe Ferry about six miles downstream. It was cloudy and with darkness descending there were few other craft to be seen when they picked up a mooring and commenced assembling the Torch tent. Rain showers punctuated the night.

Saturday 10.45 am, both boats were sailed, in bright sunshine with scattered white cumulus, to the Ferry to pick up crews Wendy and Karl Hannemann joining to see what this dinghy-cruising lark is all about. Also waiting there were seasoned campaigners George Saffrey in his well worked-up Cruz Aurora and Bill Serjeant with his beautiful new Shetland-shaped, double-ender Micro. Her traditional cream colour punctuated with varnished mahogany, spotless white sails and sparkling metalwork made her the envy of all. Bill was more reserved, for she has been the test bed for a number of experimental ideas and his main concern was with comparing her performance against similar craft under a variety of conditions. The weather was about to oblige.

Following a light start the southwest wind now began to build. As a group, the four craft beat upstream against the ebb to Ramsholt. It soon became apparent that Bill’s boat was initially quite tender. The boat had no boards to give lateral resistance but relied only on its long bilge keels. Add to this its light weight, made possible by the use of modern epoxy and plywood construction and also the heeling power of its true gaff rig producing a fairly high centre of effort for the sail plan and it could be seen that the gusty wind was giving Bill more than sufficient exercise in sitting out.

Above Ramsholt, George and Bill stayed on moorings for lunch. Paul and Alison’s boats returned to the shingle beach at the Ferry to meet with Dave Jennings who had just launched his balanced-lug rigged Highlander Orinoco. The sky above us was momentarily darkening when Dave departed under double-reefed main to discover whether he should deploy his roller reefing headsail. Afterwards he called it ‘survival time’. We ashore decided not to launch for a while. After the worst had passed we set sail to find that we had all the power that we could handle. George and Bill had sailed down to join us but even with a big reef in, Bill was having to employ all his years of experience to stay in command of his beautiful, but skittish, young craft. We were all now using the windward-going flood to beat up through Ramsholt moorings with a great deal of river traffic coming the other way, in the heavy, gusting conditions. Bill returned to the Ferry. The rest of us sailed on through mixed racing fleets enjoying the testing conditions through The Rocks, to the calm of Waldringfield where we said goodbye to our day crews and departed again for Woodbridge.

It was early evening but It was still a good force four gusting more, as we single-handed up to the lee of Kyson Point just below Woodbridge. Dave did a real-life rescue, in a ‘hat overboard’ situation. It was pleasing to see the fully-rigged Mirror arriving unscathed with only a lightweight helm and no crew. We anchored in about 1.75m, close to HW and used the Mirror to ferry us ashore to the Cherry Tree pub in Woodbridge for a meeting with Graham and Valerie Wadeson and their friend Julia.

And then there was the next idyllic morning, hot and sunny to round it all off. George and Dave drifted downstream with the ebb. Paul rowed and Alison sailed up to Woodbridge to recover their boats.