Nine creeks on the Colne
Tony Smith finds himself gleefully grounded in the peaceful, old world Essex backwaters
Tony Smith on pottering about upstream without an engine
An unusual silence hung in the warm air as I made my way over the mud to Shoal Waters, my engineless gaff cutter which I keep on the River Blackwater. The evening was so quiet I could hear the resident cuckoo call from across the sea wall to each second step of my squelching wellies. The boat looked a picture in her matching mint green canvas cockpit and new sail cover. Anticipation rose of the cruising that was to come. I planned to make the 10-mile passage to the River Colne and visit some of the creeks found inside the river.
For Shoal Waters and I this was our eighth season together. I recall the late Charles Stock telling me it took him 10 years to work out the best way to single-handedly lower the mast on her. Therefore as much as I had a head start – and I felt I knew her as an extension to my arm – I wondered if I would learn something new this voyage.
I unloaded my rucksack of supplies: bread, dried fruit, and nuts for the larder, and tins and jars in the milk crate so they don’t roll about. Melons go in a plastic box and – until eaten – can be moved either side to help trim the boat. The bottle of red grapes goes on the floor (the coolest place inside the cabin) and is secured with a bungee cord. I had enough grub and water to last three days, five at a pinch, seven if I cut the watermelon into quarters.
The plan was to set off on the morning tide. As daylight turned into night the deep blue sky allowed me enough light for a pre-cruise rigging check and to lubricate the Wykham Martin furlers on the headsails.
Sunday HW arrived at 0400 and the radio forecast a northerly, Force 3-4, poor visibility and the chance of sea fog. We
got away at 0530 and passed Bradwell Creek at 0715 and held the river middle in depths up to 13m chart datum – way out of my more familiar sounding cane range – to pick up the Nass Beacon. It’s around this point where the river opens up to wide sea vistas and often a useful sea breeze.
Molliette in the fog
However the winds were light so I eased the outhaul a little more to try and draw us along. We slowly skirted eastward along the edge of Mersea Flats, heading for the Molliette Beacon, an east cardinal marking the wreck of the Molliette, a three masted schooner built of reinforced concrete and completed in 1919.
Visibility lowered as I approached the Molliette at 0945, nearing low water. Suddenly sea fog came in with a south-east breeze and the beacon vanished. I could see no further than 50ft. I’d normally head north-east from here in between a drying area of mud to the east and those hard miles of Mersea Flats to the north and west.
Thankfully I was within soundings and ferociously worked the cane in 6ft of water while steering a compass course east at the same time. I aimed to pass south of the drying area of mud that would ground us. Anxiously, I held this course for 20 minutes until I found one of the large yellow buoys that mark the western boundary of the Colne Fishery. Shortly afterwards, the fog cleared enough to reveal Point Clear and we sailed northeastward into the buoyed deep water before bearing away for a nice quarter toward the port of Brightlingsea.
A lot of building work has gone on in Brightlingsea in recent years and, like Marmite, locals either hate or love the tall marina and flats complex. For mariners it does make the Colne easier to aim for from seaward. Being a working river, from the Inner Bench Head the approach to the Colne and up to Wivenhoe is well marked. And as we sailed north I couldn’t help taking a slant eastward for on our starboard side was Point Clear Bay and the entrance to Ray Creek.
The creek doubles back taking a course south for about a mile behind saltings
‘Melons go in a plastic box and – until eaten – can be moved either side to help trim the boat!’
and Colne Point Nature Reserve until it reaches an old gravel works jetty.
For me, one of the main attractions of the Colne is its diverse coastal topography. There are huge gravel features such as the Mersea Stone, Colne Point and St Osyth Stone Point, all spartan and minimalist. Their intriguing shapes are fully revealed at low tide in the saltings, which are fringed by lush greenery. Oyster catchers sweep over the creeks giving out their piping call, and the pace is altogether slower than that of the towns.
From Ray Creek I crossed the Colne where I noticed a smack careened on the inside of Mersea Stone. A few small dinghies had just landed nearby and the sailors were milling around. I sometimes land here myself but it was low water and the sea fog was creeping in so I decided to continue and make use of the south-easterly. I sailed round the back of Mersea Island and west along the low marshland setting of Pyefleet Creek, also known as Pyefleet Channel. Here, I dropped the hook on the south bank for elevenses... that lasted a few hours.
Refreshed, and with the outhaul cleated taut for a freshening wind, it was time to go sailing again. I hoisted the mainsail, adjusting the peak to give the correct amount of diagonal crease and most efficient shape. What fun it was to tack down the creek over the incoming tide, skimming close to the withies marking the oyster trays at the old brick shed.
Back in the main river I sailed right around the barge Edme as she sat at anchor opposite the leaning Batemans Tower, a 19th century folly now used by the Colne Yacht Club to administer races. At No17 buoy in the Colne I took a turn west into South Geedon Creek which runs up behind Rat Island and joins North Geedon Creek before it forks and both creeks take separate paths again.
Ghostly encounters
I spent a memorable night at South Geedon Creek a few years ago when I saw the legendary ghost dog, Black Shuck, climb down from the island, traipse straight past the boat and disappear up on the marsh. Another time I thought I saw Shuck when I walked along the sea wall at 0100. “Is anyone there?” I called into the pitch black. The red flash I took to be his slithering tongue or eyes turned out to be the lit end of a cigarette! Hearing other voices I realised there were three more of them all by our club slipway. Slightly hesitant, I walked down the slip and stood six inches from one of them. The others gathered round as I politely asked what they were doing here at low tide, at this small hour, in the back of beyond. “Just havvin a chat about fishing ‘ere me owd mate,” was his reply. I still couldn’t see or make out who any of them were and as I walked out into the mud to the boat I thought to myself, now that was a true ghostly encounter...
The wind had backed north-east by now
‘I saw the legendary ghost dog Black Shuck climb down from the island’
and I swung round the tip of the island and sailed back into the main river on an easy port tack. Around Fingringhoe Wick Nature Reserve and Alresford Creek we left the low marshland and passed banks lined with rising hills and tall trees. The sailing had been easy up until now, by all accounts a stolen passage. A man that knows this coast must come back to it once in a while and watch the sky melt into the sea.
With the tide turned at 1600 I headed back downriver. I anchored and spent the night in Pyefleet, eventually drying out near low water on the sloping putty.
The next day I enjoyed a lie-in and took the midday tide to see how far we could get up the Colne. We set off with full sail and passed Alresford Creek buoy at 1440. As Wivenhoe came into view I steered close to the navigation buoys as the channel narrows and mudflats reach over to Fingringhoe Wick. A couple of buoys further upstream we bore away and took the deep water channel west to Wivenhoe Reach.
There are several moorings here, and just below the unmissable Colne tide barrier is the home of Wivenhoe Sailing Club that has a welcoming visitor jetty.
Wind being consistent I sailed past Ballast Quay on our port side where the coaster James Prior lay alongside. She’s a familiar sight around here, carrying her cargo of ballast to the Thames Estuary. The sound of her engine is as distinct as the kettle’s whistle on board Shoal Waters.
Confident with the current wind strength, we had a steady but sure glide through the tide barrier into the ancient port of Wivenhoe where tiny sea gardens mingle with tides, and life once swung to the rivet of boatbuilding, with the ships being sent all over the world.
Sailing close to a weather shore, we slipped slowly by old then new houses, past a group sat on the water’s edge at The Rose And Crown pub. A trawler I’d seen earlier heading out to sea was unloading its catch on one of the quays. I contemplated what had gone before and thought I quite like Wivenhoe and neighbouring Rowhedge on the opposite bank, except for the new buildings close to the corner of Roman River. This wilderness, otherwise known as Fingringhoe Creek, attracts shoal draught adventurers who trip along each muddy bend through a valley so green you couldn’t imagine it was
sea water creeping up to the old mill and converted Victorian granary.
Sailing on up the Colne we passed another couple of pubs at Rowhedge: Ye Old Albion, and The Anchor. We moored against the quay beside the pontoon where the Wivenhoe to Rowhedge ferry lands. For a small fee visiting yachts able to take the ground can moor alongside Lion Quay and Pearson Quay. There’s a certain charm to sailing quietly along here, past the boats on mud moorings in rills (small streams) in the saltings. Cattle grazed on the left bank and in the distance was a tower block on a hill, part of Essex University’s Colchester campus.
Our driving wind died off, leaving us to claw the last of the flood tide. We’d almost reached the industrial outskirts of Colchester, but the tide dictated we’d go no further and began to ebb. I gybed around and had a most pleasant amble to the mudflats outside Alresford Creek where we anchored and slept soundly on soft mud.
The glass had fallen coming downriver and most of the forecast Force 6 had blown itself out as I slept. I was awake at 0400 for the day’s sailing and, in Force 5 north-easterly with cloud and drizzle, had to skin-up before taking the tide into Alresford Creek. Even without a blue sky this shallow creek is charming. There are iron relics from bygone days when a railway crossed over the creek and an old white-painted bargeboard cottage by the ford. With Thorrington Tide Mill, All Saints church spire on the high ground and sheep in the fields below, it’s the epitome of a rural Essex creek.
The descent down Alresford Creek began at 0540 high water from a cut in the saltings called Church Dock. We left the creek and nudged the miniature gut marker buoys that lead you out into the main river. At the starboard Alresford Creek Buoy we turned sharply to port and had the whole river to ourselves.
At 0700 Shoal Waters was sailing like a runaway train on the ebb-tide past the beach huts in Brightlingsea Creek. We continued north, past the south channel where hundreds of boats were lashed to pontoons or swinging from mooring buoys, and Harkers Yard where traditional boatbuilding still takes place.
We sailed until we grounded mid-creek at 0750 near Cindery Island and the saltings to the north. Baked beans for breakfast, a wash and a shave, and I was away again at 1415. We tacked away up to Wellwick Wharf in Flag Creek, where we grounded again, and I had to get the quant out to push Shoal Waters free of the mud.
I retraced our course back to Brightlingsea Creek and had to lift the rudder and keel up to get blown over a foot-deep gap between the two Cindery islands known as The Folly. Legend has it the islands were joined until a St Osyth man, tired of rowing his boat around to work in Brightlingsea, cut a narrow rill through to shorten his journey, which over time eroded.
I headed for the mouth of St Osyth Creek before heading down the south channel of Brightlingsea Creek in warm sunshine, through the maze of moored craft over the flooding tide. The north-easterly F4 to 5 was consistent, and I began the passage home to Goldhanger Creek in the River Blackwater at 1600, picking up our mooring buoy exactly three hours later.
Altogether, I’d sailed 44 miles and taken in nine creeks in three days and three nights. It was wonderful. Already I was looking forward to my next trip.
‘Shoal Waters was sailing like a runaway train on the ebb-tide past Brightlingsea Creek’