Wind against you, tide for you: an evening on a neap tide

Not every good sail needs a big tide or a fair wind. Some of the best ones happen despite both being against you.

Late August, a neap tide — one of the smaller ones of the month — and a strong easterly blowing straight into the creeks we wanted to sail. On paper, a difficult evening. In practice, one of the better ones.

Wind against you, tide for you

A strong easterly meant no realistic sailing towards Sluice Creek and Stonemeal — the wind was coming from almost exactly the direction we needed to go. So the trip started under power, working quietly against it.

What the neap tide gave us was shelter. Lower water keeps you tucked down between the creek banks rather than up and exposed, and that alone took most of the weather out of the day.

Because it's a neap tide, you're a little bit more tucked down in the creeks, which meant we got a bit of shelter from that strong wind. There were a few waves, but of course in the creeks they don't build up. This is the thing with the salt marsh — it's very safe, even in quite extreme conditions.

Strong wind, flat water. Not a combination you'd expect, and one of the reasons the marsh works as well as it does.

Punting through the shallows

Up Sluice Creek, past East Hills by Gun Barrel Creek, and into water shallow enough that the electric engine occasionally touched sand.

That's not too much of a problem — in some ways it's nice for a family, because it makes it more active. We get the oars out, everybody has to lean in, and I take the engine up and we punt and paddle. I quite enjoy that, because it's more interactive, and people get to feel the boat and the tides and the creeks.

It turns a passenger experience into a participatory one. Nobody minds running gently aground when getting off it again is half the fun.

Tibbell's Hole

Eventually to Tibbell's Hole — the deepest water in this stretch of marsh — and a spot tucked out of the wind that Henry had never actually stopped at before, despite years of sailing this ground.

Every time we go out, the conditions are always different.

Hot drinks and cake, and a swim in water warm enough that nobody wanted to get straight back out.

Often when we swim, people are in and out — that refreshing cold-water swim. But you find in late August you can stay in twenty minutes and still not be cold, which is wonderful.

Someone who has been working with us on the website came out with his two children, wanting to properly understand what these trips are like rather than just describe them secondhand. One of the children had been wary of boats and water — an earlier sailing experience had thrown them in at the deep end and knocked their confidence. A slower boat, a gentle sail and no pressure to do more than they wanted seemed to put some of that right.

A boat going the other way

While everyone was swimming, Nick came past on the crab boat, ahead of his own trip, and sailed close enough for the clients to see the big lug rig properly before carrying on his way. A small thing, and exactly the kind of moment nobody can plan for.

The sail back

Once everyone was ready, and once the clients were happy and capable, the sail went up — that is always a decision made with people rather than for them — and there was a proper sail most of the way back down Mow Creek towards Stonemeal.

The sail came down just before Wells, with the wind still strong enough to make the last stretch a powerful one.

In strong wind you tend to see fewer birds — but it meant a really nice, powerful sail all the way back.

Late August is close to the busiest time on the marsh, and this evening we saw perhaps two or three other boats the entire trip, on ground that sits barely half a mile from Wells quay.

What the evening was really about

Nothing here went to plan — wrong wind direction, a low tide, a boat that touched sand more than once. And it turned into one of the better evenings of the season, for reasons that had very little to do with the sailing conditions and quite a lot to do with everything around them.

Really nice clients, engaging, loved the outdoors — exactly the sort of people who always get the best and most out of it. That mixture of hands-on when they want to be, and relaxed for the rest.

Sailing the marsh yourself

A mussel flat sail adapts to whatever the tide and wind give you on the day — which is generally the point. No two trips through this marsh are the same.

Neap or spring, the tide decides what the marsh will do. This week's high waters, and what each height is good for, are on our Wells-next-the-Sea tide times page.

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