Up the Orwell and down again

We woke late, to a wonderful cloudless morning. After a day of working on Robinetta she now has properly painted white bulwarks, a fully functioning tiller pilot mount, a properly run depth gauge/Sonar cable to the chart plotter, and the iCom radio back in place. At some point Julian will write this up!

Suffolk Yacht Haven is a great place, but lacks any food shops apart from the basics in the chandlers. We decided to head up river to Ipswich and shop, so cast off at 09:30 to take the tide up river. What little wind there was was on Robinetta’s nose, so we motored, testing out the tiller pilot mount on the way. Everything worked, apart from a loss of power to the pilot that had Robinetta gently swerving to starboard towards the shallows. Luckily we were looking for problems, so quickly corrected it.

We monitored channel 68 on the radio, listening for ship movements at Ipswich and as we neared the Orwell bridge realised that a cargo ship would be swinging to come out of her berth just as we expected to be near the docks. Not a problem, as we could cross the river and be out of her way among the Orwell Yacht Club moorings. Crossing the river meant that we saw Melvyn Fox on his Heard tosher Hester, and said hello. He reminded us that there would be a regatta at Manningtree at the weekend, so we may well meet him there.
 
A barge was being pushed around by a tug as we neared Ipswich lock, so we made sure to stay out of her way, then went through the lock on free flow, an hour before high water.

We took a berth at Neptune Marina for a short stay (half the price of an overnight) and did our shopping then had a rather good vegetarian lunch at Hullabaloo. After that it was back through the lock (not on free flow this time!) and into the river.

We had hoped for a nice reach down, but the wind had shifted and risen, so was now on the nose again! We raised sail as we passed beneath the Orwell Bridge, and started beating down river. We had the tide with us again, but this raised wind over tide, and the river had a noticeable chop in places. Robinetta began to pump whenever she had been on starboard tack for a few minutes. We were not going very fast, so I tried releasing a handful of sawdust beneath the water, but I doubt any got pulled in by water flowing through the planks; we were going too fast for it to work.

Just past Pin Mill Julian asked if we should reef, and I said an immediate “Yes!”. It was not just our normal “if we think of reefing we should”. Robinetta felt distinctly overpowered. Once reefed sailing became easier, and we continued tacking down the Orwell until we reached Harwich Harbour.

By this time it was 17:00, and our original destination of the Walton Backwaters felt a bit too far, so we headed round the Shotley Horse buoy and into the River Stour. We were now on a lovely broad reach, without wind over tide, and we had a delightful sail up the Stour past Erwarton to Copperas Bay where we decided to anchor. I furled away the jib then went forward to lay out 20m of chain, while Julian sailed us into the shallows.

I had just finished laying out the chain when Julian called, “I think we’re aground.” We were. I could see the bottom, and we were not going anywhere despite Julian putting the engine in reverse. We stayed put, side on to the wind, which made getting the sails down more difficult than it should have been. We did not expect to be there long, because we stopped at 18:18, which co-incidentally was low water Harwich. Our transom mounted depth gauge showed 1.2 m, and Robinetta stayed upright, and rocked gently. We had obviously got stuck on a raised area of mud.

Julian put the anchor down on about 5m of chain, so that when we came free we would swing to it, then we turned the engine off and waited. I kept watch, while Julian had a play with the Standard Horizon AIS radio, proving to his own satisfaction that it did not work to show AIS targets. Since that was the only reason he had bought it it will be returned.

We floated free an hour after low water, with the depth gauge showing 1.6m. Julian hauled up the anchor and we motored into slightly deeper water and anchored again, in 4.5m of water. Dinner soon followed as we enjoyed a peaceful evening in a lovely spot.