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14 http://www.yachtingmonthly.com JANUARY 2016
The geese had arrived, the winds were high, the temperatures low and crews scarce, so I set off solo for the last cruise
The fresh north-easterly wind, which had given the brent geese an extra fi ve knots over the of the season: pottering in nearby rivers.
ground from the Arctic, was pinning gaff cutter, into her mud-Wendy May, my 26ft
berth, but once free of the marsh I let the sheets off and used the high water to cross
the vast sands of the Thames Estuary towards the Medway.For the fi rst time this year I
closed the butterfl y skylight, fastened down the forehatch and pulled over the main hatchway as spray
peppered the deck, backlit by a low sun.to explore. Otterham seemed to fi t the bill I dragged up the chart to fi nd a new creek
although, strictly speaking, I had been there once before, aboard the sailing barge loaded with a stack of maize starch from the Cambria,
Royal Docks, but then again a 46-year absence was enough time to bestow novelty upon a place.Otterham is at the heart of Ooze-land. Mud
can be described as a fl at, a spit, a bank, but here on the Medway there is a half-world of water and deep mud. When mud is deep enough to
stand a keelboat upright at Low Water or to swallow a man whole, it becomes ooze.Here was Stoke Ooze, Ham Ooze, Sled
Ooze and Bishop’s Ooze, the latter so-named, I assumed, from the mitre-shaped shoal it describes. Running up between was Half Acre
Creek, an ominous name for a body of water.marked, but as the buoys petered out I spotted Otterham Creek itself is surprisingly well-
a large skiff to starboard and reckoned the ditch ran in that direction. But as I approached I saw that the skiff had reeds sticking up proud of
her gunwales and just as I realised she was the highest part of a marshy tuft, my dinghy came up and hit Wendy May’s transom. We were
aground 100 yards from the head of the creek.sat drinking tea in the cockpit, surveying my I dropped the anchor, then the sails and
surroundings. There were abandoned vesselseverywhere. To port the drunken mast of a smack half engorged by mud, over to starboard the spiky bones of an old barge. The chart,
too, depicted at least half a dozen little black triangles: wrecks abounded.As Wendy May fl oated and turned to face
the wind and tide I dropped back out to Sharfl eet Creek. I didn’t want her joining the
gathered company. It was the highest tide of the year and as I rowed ‘ashore’ the
dinghy went straight over the fl ooded marsh top.Only a few stalks of grass
incongruously from their spiky tops. Sea pinks held their heads above water with bladderwrack hanging
bent their heads underwater and a previously unseen yacht, which had been nestling in a sheltered inlet, stood up high and exposed.
back across the estuary. Away down to the east I could see an anchored freighter’s derricks I left the Medway the next morning and sailed
silhouetted against the dawn sky: she was wind-rode, which meant the ebb was still running. I needed the ebb to clear the Medway, but the
fl ood to enter my home channel. So I tacked back and forth along the edge of the West Knock sands, and hove-to until the freighter showed
me her stern and I knew the fl ood had started.there was still not enough height to get me over I ran back up river under headsail alone, but
the bar and I anchored in the Loway, west of Southend Pier, to await more depth. The voice of John Humphrys on the radio joined me for
tea down below until I dozed off in the sunlight that fi ltered through the skylight. Suddenly two blasts of a hooter had me racing up on deck,
thinking I’d dragged into the shipping lanes. But Wendy Maymoving was the pier train pulling out from its was still on station. The only thing
platform bound back to shore. W‘When mud is deep enough to stand
a keelboat upright at Low Water, it
becomes ooze’As the winter geese drop down, so does the temperature. YouÕll need to enjoy your own company to go cruising