The lowest tide of the month, and the best light

Every so often the tide table produces a day that looks, on paper, like a write-off.

A 1.9-metre tide is about as low as it gets here. The creeks barely fill. The salt marsh is simply unavailable — there is no water in it to speak of, so none of the winding, hidden-channel sailing that most people come for is possible. What you have is the main channel out towards Wells bar, and that is your lot.

What we would normally think — oh Christ, how are we going to make this interesting — was absolutely stunning.

Which is worth writing down, because it turns out the lowest tide of the month has something none of the others do.

Why low water looks like that

When the sea comes in it covers everything, and the marsh becomes a sheet of water. On a big tide that is the whole point — it is what makes the creek trips possible.

On a 1.9, the opposite happens. The water never covers the banks, so the sand stays up: not just the outer banks but the high ground inside the channels, the bottoms of the creeks, ridges you would never otherwise know were there. The whole estuary turns gold, and stays gold.

Because the sea hardly comes in, you've got all these sandbanks exposed, so this sort of golden colour is everywhere — which you don't get when the sea comes in.

Put a low August sun on that, and it does not look like the same coast.

The boat for a day like this

Salford Whelker is a whelk boat, thirty feet, the largest of our four boats at Wells, with a big lug rig and a staysail. Underneath her runs a long flat keel of solid oak, about six inches deep — which is why she can work this coast at all. On a tide like this one, six inches of draught is the difference between sailing and sitting.

Seven aboard, and that is where she comes into her own.

She is stable. Not stable in the sense of unlikely to capsize, but stable in the sense that people forget they are on a boat — they stand up, wander about, sit somewhere else, carry on a conversation across the deck.

It's very sociable. You don't have to worry about lines and boats tipping over, so you can really enjoy it.

For a family that matters more than performance does. Nobody is being asked to do anything. There is no crouching under a boom or bracing against a heel.

Out to the bar

A warm, light northerly. Out under power down the main channel, past East Hills, past the lifeboat station, past the beach huts with the water in front of them full of people.

The bar itself was rough, as it usually is when the wind is in the north — that is the point at which the estuary stops and the North Sea starts, and it is always the liveliest bit of the trip.

It is also the only place you get the whole coast at once. From out at the bar the land opens up in both directions: Blakeney Point away to the east, and westward, just about made out on a clear day, Scolt Head Island. Two spits of sand and shingle facing each other across the top of Norfolk, with everything we sail between them.

Then the lug sail up, and the whole way back down the channel under sail.

Everybody was mega relaxed — lying down, snoozing, chatting. No engine thundering away in the background.

That is the difference the sail makes, and it is not about speed. An engine fills a boat with noise for four hours and everyone talks over it without noticing. Take it away and people go quiet, and then they start talking properly.

Breakfast at anchor

Anchor down at the edge of the channel by East Hills, and everybody in the water.

Lunch was requested as breakfast, which is a perfectly good idea at any hour: bacon, eggs, mushrooms, tomatoes, a pot of tea and cafetières of coffee. Then a short walk on East Hills before packing up.

The coffee came with its usual story — the beans cross the Atlantic under sail from Colombia rather than by container ship — which this lot had not heard before, despite it being their fourth trip with us.

Four hours and twenty minutes

Out to the bar a second time, and then sailed the whole way home again. Longer than a standard trip, and only because nobody wanted it to end.

Which is the useful thing to take from a day that the tide table said would be no good. The marsh trips need water. This does not. On the lowest tides of the month, when the creeks are shut, the channel is open and the light is better than it will be all year.

Sailing with us

Salford Whelker takes a larger group than our other boats and suits a family or a party that wants to sit together and talk. The trip runs on tides when the marsh sails cannot.

See when we're sailing