Sep
2007
Posted in At home West Mersea Weekend
Travelled down to Ispwich on Friday night to stay with Bruce and Graeme, who we went sailing with in May. We spent the night at their house before heading off at 6.30 to catch the tide down the Orwell on our way to West Mersea, which is on Mersea Island off the East Coast of Essex. It was an encouraging (early start) helped by lovely bacon butties from Bruce aboard Bright Oyster. The wind was Force 4, blowing 5 and this made for a lively sail and we had to reef to calm things down. With the tide with us we peaked at nearly 8 knots and had some exciting sailing over to Mersea.
In fact we raced along so fast that we arrived at Mersea about 1pm, an hour ahead of our prediction. The approach up the river was fun: it looked narrow on the map but was was roomy in reality. The sand bars were hidden and we had a couple of metres of depth below the keel which is a lot for the East Coast. We were asked to moor on some pilings close to the pontoon: none of us had done this before. A couple of permutations later we had a fore and aft line around the poles and were ready for lunch in town. We called a water taxi and by 2 we were on our way across town to the Company Shed which is a fantastic restaurant. Well, it’s a fishmongers really with a place to east cooked fish attached. We spent an hour waiting for a table at the Company Shed, and waited the time out in the bar of the West Mersea Yacht Club, near their trophy cabinet, glittering with silverware (and a coconut trophy). The fish selection at the Company Shed was great: Crab, lobsters, prawns, and lots of types of fish. The shelfish is stoed live in towers of large crates at one end of the restaurant. We had a dozen native and a dozen gigas oysters which were lovely (and the gigas were better in my opinion), then a fish platter for four, with a side dish of whelks for me. The food was fantastically fresh and good quality. The crab, whelks and prawns were especially good. We had two crabs between the four of us.We brought our own bread and a couple of bottles of wine, so it was a bit of a blow out really.
We had showers and another drink at the WMYC with Steve, who also joined us for the very end of dinner (down from Brightlingsea). As we were having our pints we saw the water taxi driver heading up to the car park at the rear of the restaurant. One problem with West Mersea is that the water taxi stops at 6.30 (even on a Saturday). We were warned to be back at the pontoon at 6pm sharp, and it was 6.05 when we saw our water taxi man head away to the car park. We rushed down tot he pontoon to find that a new taxi man had taken over for the last 30 minutes. So we were OK and back on the yacht again by 6.30!
Graeme and Bruce
Bright Oyster was still there on the pile mooring and in the water, rather than mid-air! The tide was going down fast and the ropes were slowly squeeking their way down the poles. We got out some wine and finally a bottle of whisky. Played some cards—I made up the rules for Black Maria (and got them quite wrong!) with an aim of trying not to take face-cards in whist-style hands and avoiding the queen of spades for –15 points! Well, it was fun, and I won! It was a lovely day—exciting sailing, lovely food, a fun evening, and quite a bit of alcohol.
During the night we were woken from time to time by our lines slipping and jolting up and down the poles as the boat rose and fell with the tide (the range is 4 metres!). I think Graeme suffered the most from this! I also got mauled by mosquitos! GGrrr! We were still on our mooring at 6am, and we hadn’t ‘chaffed on our piles’. It was another early start to take the tide back down the river in time to get sucked into Harwich with the tide. It was a lovely morning and very peaceful, at 6am.
We were off by 6.30 and, somewhat subdued after the heavy night, made our way to Harwich, to meet up with John and Nick. The sailing was good over to Harwich, nice and sunny and we were on a reach much of the way Force 5, gusting 6. We went to visit one of Bruce and Graeme friends for tea in Harwich before heading back to Ipswich at about 3.
Nick and John
The wind would have been on the nose for sailing up the Orwell, and Michael and I wanted to catch the train back to Cambridge at 5. So we motored up the river. Nick and John, however, made a lovely display of speed and tight sailing as they tacked across the river in and out of the boats on floating moorings. It was a lovely sight.
We arrived back in Cambridge exhausted, after a great weekend. More photos on Flickr and also with a map view.
Technorati Tags: S&CA, Sailing, Sailing and Cruising Association
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Was great to have you guys aboard again. What a stroke of luck the weather didn’t let us down a second time.
Delighted to have introduced you to the Company Shed, especially since you paid!
Comment by Bruce — 5 September 2007 @ 8:25 pm
[...] Mersea Island, Skippers Bitter (in commemoration of our recent trip) [...]
Pingback by Leaving on a Jet Plane » Blog Archive » Booze on the Oose — 16 September 2007 @ 5:04 pm
[...] at the Powerlong Hotel where we are staying. It was an excellent meal: we had some cold, sliced whelks without a hint of vinegar (so I was delighted!) and some lovely prawns, and a very nice beef with [...]
Pingback by Leaving on a Jet Plane » Blog Archive » Cultural Night, Xiamen — 30 September 2007 @ 10:35 am
[...] en-route, and we arrived in West Mersea at about 1, and moored up on the piles that we occupied last time we were there with Graeme and Bruce. Shortly after we were arrived we were joined by Blue Streak, Telemon and [...]
Pingback by JetPlane » Bruce’s 40th on Mersea — 16 May 2009 @ 6:04 pm