Practical Boat Owner — November 2017

week-long sailing trips in the barging

waters of the East Coast, the intricate

network of rivers and creeks, banks and

swales between Suffolk and Kent.

The Trust works with children and

adults – everyone from eight-year-olds

from St Joseph’s College in Ipswich

through to an older generation with

Dementia Adventure, a charity dedicated

to improving the quality of life of people

with dementia. The success stories are

as heartwarming as they are remarkable.

There are four teenage crew on this trip,

together with Richard the skipper, Hilary

the mate, and Jack the third hand. With

bigger groups they run a watch system,

ensuring that everyone gets an

opportunity to learn every job and nobody

ends up doing either only popular or

unpopular work. In their heyday, barges

were sailed by a man and a boy (or

according to Hilary a man and a woman –

partners, like her and Richard, in life as

well as work).

Many trainees started coming as part of

a group and return as individuals,

financed, if they cannot afford the fees

themselves, by bursaries from the charity.

Unlike some other sail training

organisations, Sea-Change stays in touch

with – and in some cases mentors – its

trainees when they are ashore between

trips, so Sea-Change participants, some

of whom come from very difficult home

circumstances, become part of a warm

and familiar extended family.

Gathering momentum

We are moving fast now, down a coiling

brown lane of water past the municipal

paddling pool and something that might

be a park. The crew are tidying up,

cheesing lines on the green tarpaulin

hatch covers, sloshing the quayside grime

off the side decks.

rather constrained group round her wheel
(MCA surveyor on board, says Richard
out of the side of his mouth). Yachty
smarm is not in evidence. The engines of
the barges on the outside of the raft fart
diesel smoke, and the great beasts slide
into the middle of the creek and hang
there, waiting for us to go.

Setting sail
Reminder is sailing off her berth. We are
up by the mast, letting go brails – on a
barge, the mainsail is not hoisted and
lowered, but brailed against the huge steel
mast with top, lower and main brails. The
breeze is blowing down the creek, straight
out to sea.
We let out a fat russet bag of mainsail,
keeping some turns on the main brail’s
winch, because it is holding a sail that
looks roughly the size of a tennis court
and the pressure is mighty.
She starts, she moves, she seems to feel
the thrill of life along her keel. The
helmsperson passes the fat spokes
through her hands. We are moving. The
quay slides by, and the mutter of the other
barge engines fades as the huge hulls
settle back into their berths.
The Sea-Change Sailing Trust takes
parties of people, many suffering from social
isolation or various kinds of exclusion, for

Sail training on a thameS barge

➜

Hilary explains the

anchor windlass to one

of the novice crew

Hydrogen, one of the Thames barges based at Maldon

It’s no picnic... teenage crew are expected

to get stuck in aboard Reminder

Thames sailing barge

Reminder heads out

into the Blackwater