Blakeney on a low tide: mud banks, cotton sails, and a boy's verdict

There is a particular week, somewhere between August and September, when the coast changes without anyone deciding it should.

The heat goes out of the sun. The light softens. There are fewer people about, and everything feels a shade more mellow than it did a fortnight before. This was that week — a beautiful afternoon, and a sail that turned out to be one of the better ones of the season for reasons that had very little to do with distance covered.

An hour either side of the top

Blakeney does not care what the overall tide is doing. Whatever the height, there is only water enough to get out and back for roughly an hour either side of high tide — and on a 2.4-metre tide, that window is unforgiving.

We only got away about an hour before high water, and straight back in two hours after — and that involved getting out and pushing the boat up the creek. So that gives you an idea what we're up against.

Which is the thing worth understanding about Blakeney specifically: it is not really a question of how big the tide is. It is a question of how narrow the window either side of the top turns out to be, and some days that window is generous and some days it very much is not.

Mabel, and her sail

Out in Mabel, electric engine astern, a sculling oar for close work. She is a touch lighter than the mussel flats, built originally for launching straight off a beach to go fishing.

Her sail is natural cotton rather than the synthetic equivalent most of our other working sails now use — cut plain, and eventually dyed red the traditional way rather than woven that colour. It is a small difference that clients notice and ask about every time.

The idea is to use a natural cotton and then eventually dye it red, as they would have done back in the day — and the clients love that discussion.

We scraped off the mud the moment there was water enough, and had a lovely sail on an offshore wind, up and down the Pit a couple of times while the tide allowed it.

The view on a low tide

Because the water was so low, the mud banks and sandbanks were showing everywhere — and that changes the whole look of this stretch of coast.

You get this completely different view of Blakeney, Cley, Morston on this neap tide. There's more of the marsh visible. If you go out on the spring, everything's flooded. There's something magical about that.

It is easy to assume a bigger tide is always the better one. It generally is not — it is simply a different coast. On the springs, the marsh is water from edge to edge. On a neap like this, the shape of the ground underneath it is laid bare, and that has its own kind of beauty.

Anchored on the mud

The anchor went down on the edge of a mud bank, and the children were straight in the water, playing and swimming while lunch was got ready — coffee, soup, and ginger cake, which went down as it always does.

A family visiting from Scotland, warm and easy company, the kind of people who make a trip better simply by being good at enjoying it. The usual mix on our boats — everyone interesting, everyone from somewhere different, and always a good conversation to be had over soup on a mud bank.

Sailed some, walked some, motored some

An hour after high water would not normally trouble a trip at Wells. At Blakeney it does, and with the tide already dropping the decision was to take it slowly rather than push.

I said, look, keep eating your lunch and I'll take us back slowly.

Under power back into the main channel, and then out of the boat entirely for the shallowest stretch — walking her through, the whole family pitching in.

We sailed some of it, walked some of it, motored some of it. The boys loved getting out, and we all pushed the boat together.

Three hours, start to finish, and not one of them spent wishing it were easier.

The best one yet

One of the children put it better than we could.

I've been on lots of boat trips — that was the best one ever.

Not the longest sail, not the biggest tide, not the furthest we go. A narrow window, a boat that needed pushing at the end, and a stretch of marsh laid bare by the low water. Put together, that was apparently all it took.

Sailing the Pit yourself

Blakeney trips run to a tight window either side of high water — narrower on some tides than others — so timings here move more than most. Mabel takes a small group and suits exactly this kind of unhurried afternoon.

To see when high water falls this week, and why Blakeney is a window rather than a height, check our Wells-next-the-Sea tide times.

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