This year has, for the non-retired sailor of a small shoal-draft boat, been a bit of a dead loss. Most of the weekends on which I did not have to stay at home were either too windy to sail, or a flat calm. Since I live 2 hours drive away from the mooring, I can't just simply nip down to the boat and see if it's going to be good for a sail, I have to plan things out which has the unfortunate effect that I probably miss a number of good sailing weekends where the forecast was incorrect. Naiad does not have an engine and her mooring in the Besom Fleet is just inside the narrows between Cobb Island and the shingle beach on Mersea Island meaning that I also have to choose my tides carefully so that I can sail out of and back into the Fleet.

However, tides, weather and my time all co-operated on two consecutive weekends at the beginning of September. With High Water around 15:00 on Friday 6th September and with a reasonable weather forecast for the following day I was able to get down to Naiad's mooring in daylight late on Thursday afternoon. Leaving most things in the car parked behind the club, no point in rowing stuff all the way out to Naiad when she will be much closer in a few hours, I rowed out to Naiad and prepared her for a sail. I intended to sail up the Fleet and take up a vacant mooring buoy in front of the yacht club around midnight which should be about half flood allowing me to see where half ebb would be the next morning, more or less.

With the smack race due for Saturday I found two smacks lying alongside the scrubbing posts with clean hulls ready for the race.

I have to say that I didn't sleep that well, although I didn't have much trouble falling asleep, as I didn't want to miss the time window I had set myself so I was a little bleary eyed when I cast off the mooring ropes and, towing Sprite behind, I unfurled the staysail and sailed up the Fleet. We were just two days past Spring Tides so the flood was moving quite rapidly and the reason for needing the staysail up was to give us some steerage way, not to move us along.

In what seemed like no time at all I grabbed hold of a mooring buoy and made fast. After ensuring that all was well I went back to bed.

The view towards the hard and the shoreline.

Again, I didn't sleep well and got up every hour to stick my head out of the hatch and check what was going on. Just before High Tide at 3am, or thereabouts, I heard the two smacks start engines and a short time later they both motored off, presumably back to their moorings. I took the opportunity to row ashore to get the remainder of the stuff I had left in the car, now much shorter distance to row. I also took the time to tow Naiad over to the now vacant scrubbing posts and to sling a loop of rope around one of them which I tied off to Naiad's Sampson post. With the tide now ebbing Naiad would not swing around the post and hit the other a short distance away.

Naiad lying quietly to the scrubbing post.

The view aft down the Besom Fleet. Not a lot of wind as you can tell.

Then it was back to bed and this time, for a few hours, I slept well.

I got up again at 6am and used the East Coast Depth Sounder a.k.a bamboo cane to see how much water there was under the hull. On finding about 3 1/2 feet I made a cup of tea and had breakfast, prodding the bottom with the cane every so often until there was about 2' 6" of water. Then it was on with the waders, hop over the side, untie the rope around the post and manhandle Naiad over to where I wanted to beach her.

Naiad in position as the ebb continues. At this point the bows are agroud but the stern is not.

Fully aground.

From a different angle.

Whilst she was still floating I used a scrubbing brush screwed to the side of a long broom handle to scrub away to what I could reach. For all intents and purposes this means all but the hull area between the bilge runners which would have to wait until she floated again at which time the scrubbing brush could reach between the runners and the keel.Under the waterline Naiad is coated with C-Guard copper epoxy so she does not need to be repainted with anti-fouling every season. This was a deliberate decision since Naiad is fairly flat under the water and the only way to paint her is to haul her out onto her trailer or to lift her out of the water in slings, both of which are a pain in the neck. With the copper epoxy all that is required is a regular scrub with a stiff-bristled brush to remove the weed and slime. So far barnacles have found the copper to be unpalatable and she has not had them adhere to the hull. Thus scrubbing is a fairly easy proposition requiring only waders, scrubbing brush on a pole and a high tide. I did once scrub Naiad’s bottom in the middle of the night in February of this year by the light of the car headlights.

Until the tide returned it was relax until Naiad floated again about six hours later. I had a fairly lazy few hours until Naiad floated again and the remaining parts of the hull could be scrubbed.

The tide in flood, soon to lift Naiad with her clean bottom off the mud.

The plan had been to then wait until High Water and either tow Naiad to the mooring on the ebb tide or to sail if the wind allowed, but that was still a few hours away so I elected to just get on with it despite towing against the tide. It took quite a long time to row out the 600m or so due to the flooding tide, but we made it. Then all I had to do was to stow everything away and go home.

So far so good. Now that Naiad has a clean bottom I could plan a voyage for the next decent weekend which, in this case, turned out to be the following weekend.I like to have several plans for a voyage based on the possible wind and tide combinations and I try not to be too wedded to the idea of getting to point A at all costs. Instead, if at the time of casting off the mooring lines, the conditions are better for point B, then that is the destination towards which we shall head. I usually plan for three eventualities, the primary destination, known as Plan A, a secondary destination called Plan B and the default option, also known as Plan C, which is to stay on the mooring and relax. On one notable occasion I did manage to get up to Plan F, there are just so many places for a small, shallow-draft boat to go without leaving the Blackwater at all.

Plan A for this trip was to head up river to Mundon Stone Point and spend the night on the mud either inside or outside the point depending on the wind, with the inside being the preferred option. Plan B was just to sail up river until the tide changed and then head back to the mooring and Plan C was to stay on the mooring.

On the morning of the trip the weather seemed to be following the forecast and I set off with plan A in mind. We left the mooring at 13:00 with two reefs in the mainsail and just the staysail unfurled as the wind was forecast to be force 3 gusting 5 out in the river, decreasing 3 gusting 4 and then 2 gusting 3 about the time I was due to arrive. Now although Naiad will handle force 5, I don't like it, it's uncomfortable and Naiad is nearly impossible to control in such winds with full sail up, and hence the double reef. I’m a ‘Cup of Tea Sailor’ in that if the boat heels over far enough to spill my cup of tea, I have too much sail up.

After about an hour I shook out the second reef as the wind dropped and then the first reef shortly after. All told, I had a very enjoyable sail up the river doing around 3 knots in the falling wind with the neap tide. Mundon Stone Point was still all mud on the inside when we arrived so I nosed Naiad into the soft mud, dropped anchor and took stock.

Nosed into the soft mud inside Mundon Stone Point facing towards the point.

What I was looking for was a flat-ish section of mud that would be uncovered until about 2 hours before high water. As my mentor said, "Make certain that the tide has dropped at least a foot before the boat grounds" and since his boat is the one upon which Naiad is based, that seemed to be good advice for us to follow. Two hours before high water at neaps in this location would be at least a foot, so I would be able to get off the mud again in the morning.

You can just about see the area I'm talking about in the above photo to the right of the pole on the point starting just below the start of the shingle spit. There's a thin line of light brown mud below the shingle and above a darker area of mud closer to the water. Not easy to see in the photo but much easier when you are there in person.

The shingle spit that extends Southwards from the point.

More of the spit closer to the point.

As far as I could see from where I had Naiad anchored I could see a fairly flat area of mud just inside the curl of the spit of shingle that had formed around the point by the action of decades, if not centuries of tide. Looking at a screen grab taken from Google Maps the shingle spit is clearly visible but it is not possible to see the lie of the mud. To see that you need to be there and this time I was.

A screengrab from Google Maps clearly showing the shingle spit.

Charles Stock often mentioned that this was one of his favourite anchorages and talked about the back eddy inside the point and I wondered if this was the place about which he was talking. Only one way to find out and, as the rising tide lifted Naiad off the mud, I weighed anchor and poled Naiad over towards the flat area using the quant. I grounded, floated and poled a few times after that until Naiad was pretty much in the centre of the flat area and at that point I threw the anchor out into the mud. This was a bit awkward as I was holding on to the forestay with one hand and throwing the muddy anchor with the other trying at the same time not to get mud all over everywhere, but I did manage to get the anchor into the mud about 10 feet away.

Naiad now inside the shingle spit.

There was enough mud still showing so that I could see that there were no obvious obstructions upon which Naiad could hurt herself should she ground on one as the tide ebbed and I was pretty happy with the location. Then I looked down into the exceptionally clear water and I could see the tide swirling around the boat in a small back eddy. I believe I had found the very spot about which Charles was talking.

I have to confess that a very broad smile lit my face at this realisation.

The clear waters covering the mud.

Time to tidy the ship and brew a cup of tea. The rest of the day was spend quietly reading or watching the birds that scoured the mud for food before the advancing tide covered the mud and they flew off somewhere else and drinking tea.

The setting sun around 19:19.

The view astern.

A few jet-skies did disturb the quiet later on in the evening, but they soon went back home as the sun set. I lit the anchor light and sat back in the cockpit, having put on jumper, fleece jacket and gloves as the temperature dropped sharply once the sun disappeared.

The lit anchor light and anchor ball.

To round the day off I had a Mystery Cup-a-Soup as darkness fell.

What is a Mystery Cup-a-Soup? I bought several boxes of Cup-a-Soups a while back and stowed them in one of Naiad's lockers, but the cardboard boxes got damp over time and had disintegrated, so I took out the packets of soup and threw the soggy boxes away. The trouble is that the packets no longer have the type of soup printed on them, just a bit of blurb saying how they carefully crafted the recipe for the soup contained for our enjoyment. So, it's a mystery what soup it is until you open it. The ones with lumps in which you can feel through the packet are probably Minestrone but could be any of the soups with croutons. However, I tend only to buy Minestrone, Cream of Tomato, Chicken or Beef and Tomato, so Minestrone was a good bet.

I set my alarm for midnight which, by my calculations, should be just before the point a which Naiad grounded, however, when I got up, she was firmly aground with the water nowhere in sight. Obviously I had miscalculated in a bad way, and that was a bit worrying. Still, she was safe and hadn't settled on her anchor so I went back to bed, this time setting my alarm for 6am by which point the tide should be close to floating Naiad off the mud.

The alarm went off at six o'clock and I looked out of the cabin expecting to find the water all around only to find mud all around instead. Again my calculations were wrong, which was now very worrying. I'm not usually that bad at tidal calculations. But by the time I had gotten up, done my ablutions and made a cup of tea the water was rapidly approaching. I kid you not, the tide was coming in fast. I suppose that by the time I had been awake for only 45 minutes, Naiad was afloat.

Sunrise astern over the mud. Where is the water?

Photo taken at 06:11

And this one at 06:33, the tide is racing in at this point.

It seems that my calculations for both last night and this morning were not that far off at all, rather since the mud here was so flat, the tide went out and came in very rapidly. I'll know for next time.

I still had a couple of hours before setting off, there was little wind and thus no real point getting underway until near the top of the tide, so I got out the drone and flew it around Naiad.

This photo from the drone, was taken around 07:05 and Naiad has been afloat fro about 20 minutes by this time.

As you can see Naiad is in a really nice spot and the water is so clear that from above it is difficult to see.

By 08:00 I was ready to leave so weighed anchor and poled Naiad out of the anchorage, grounding a couple of times on the shingle spit which extends out a lot farther than I expected. Then up with the sail and head for home. The problem here was the lack of wind. I suppose there was just enough wind to get us out of Lawling Creek but after that the wind died and I had to resort to using the paddle occasionally just to give a bit of steerage way.

I fitted Naiad with an AIS the last time I hauled her out and as a result I can see her route on one of the tracking websites. Provided that I remember to turn it on, that is. Looking at the plot on Marine Traffic for the two days you can see that the first part of the return track is red indicating that the AIS reported speed was around zero knots.

However, the wind did pick up off the Marconi Sailing Club and we enjoyed a very pleasant sail back to the mooring, picking up the mooring at 12:15.

I didn't rush to leave the boat, indeed it took more than two hours to pack up the few belongings I had brought for the trip, tidy up and swab the mud of the foredeck before making a harbour stow of the sail and running rigging. Before I left I had one last cup of tea after which I washed up the used cutlery and crockery and transferred my dunnage to the dinghy. Rigging the anti-seagull netting always takes time but it's one of those jobs that you cannot rush so there's no point in trying.

Finally, it was time to row ashore so I bid Naiad goodbye and set off on the return journey home.

It had been a great time on Naiad, hopefully there will be many more.