Practical Boat Owner — November 2017

W

e do most of our sailing in
the great unpeopled sea
reaches of the West Coast of
Scotland, so we tend to
approach Essex weighed down with
telly-led preconceptions of girls with rococo
nail jobs and lads on the run from the law
after a little contretemps with a cash
machine, a roundabout and some pills.
So the town of Maldon comes as a bit of
a shock. There is a charming High Street
crowded with jettied buildings. Down the
hill past the deeply eccentric church tower
are Hythe Quay, the River Chelmer and a

Sam Llewellyn goes aboard Thames Barge Reminder to see how

sailing the old-fashioned way can change people's lives back on land

crowd of curlews. And alongside Hythe

Quay lie the barges, gigantic, tied up two

and three deep.

These are not boring old Dutch barges,

with wheelhouses and the skipper’s

Daihatsu on davits on the after deck.

These are proper spritsail barges, around

100ft long, displacing some 100 tons,

crammed together in the muddy creek like

whale-sized sardines in a gigantic tin.

Their masts and sprits scratch the

drifting Essex clouds. They have beautiful

champagne-glass sterns, names in gold:

Kitty, Xylonite, Hydrogen, and (our target

for today) Reminder.

Once, Thames barges were the heavy

lorries of the East Coast. These days they

survive through chartering. Reminder is no

exception; but this is a charter with a

difference. Adult cash customers sail her

at weekends. On weekdays she is on

charter to the Sea-Change Sailing Trust,

brainchild of the lifelong sailor and (since

1994) full-time bargeman Richard

Titchener and his partner, Hilary Halajko.

It is the top of the tide, and time to get

Reminder down the creek and out into the

Blackwater. The barge ahead sets off, a

cruisingcruising

sail training on a

Thames Barge