Posted by Jock on August 23, 2007 at 07:36:30 from 87.105.81.146 user Jock.
In Reply to: Well, I find the shape of the Pye End Buoy as interesting as Beckfoot's plumbing... posted by Andrew Craig-Bennett on August 22, 2007 at 20:31:49:
Not at all Andrew. Don't take the number of follow up posts as any kind of measure of interest. (Rather they indicate how little us 'armchair sailors' know about a subject.) The old East Coast creeks and anchorages are of great interest to me and, I'm sure, many others. Please carry on posting, with links to charts, illustrations and photos if at all possible.
Have you read D.H. Clarke's EAST COAST PASSAGE, The Voyage of a Thames Sailing Barge?The wind seemed to increase; the flung spume made a wet mist across the whole wave-tossed bay, which restricted visibility. Mollie, to port searched desperately for the Pye End; Kester must have been doing the same... Not a sign.
Terrific writing!
I altered the course to port, knowing the danger of going too far to starboard and ending up on the Dovercourt Beaches. Between holding my barge right on the point of a gybe, and peering towards the flat sandy shore for some indication of where the entrance lay, I, too, was searching to port, to starboard-anywhere for the sight of a buoy. Any buoy!
The mintues passed....
Now the shore ahead was so close that I could see a solitary man walking along the beach...
I knew then that we had lost the fight. I had made the fatal mistake of allowing Nature to bully me into unseamanlike action. I had risked everything in a mad dash to leeward, towards a lee shore, because I was too tired and too frightened to turn against tempestuous forces any more. Now came the automatic pay-off for such indiscretion.
For anyone compiling a list of books that reference the SA canon, Clarke's book includes a reference to AR and SW.