News from Creekside - July 2009

The new book, Coastal Suffolk, out early August 2009, will be about 27,500 words, 72 colour photographs and a map. This is larger than   Woodbridge to the Coast and covers a larger area.Basically the countryside covered is from the River Orwell to just north of Southwold.

The whole idea of starting Creekside Publishing was to produce good quality hardback books and we have built up a very good reputation for really good local books. However because the credit crunch quickly turned into a full-blown Recession, Woodbridge to the Coast is a soft back book. We hope that our very loyal readers, some of whom have mentioned this departure, will forgive us for this.  If sales are anything to go by it is popular, because we had the best Christmas sales for four years. How many ventures can say that?

Turning to our boating activities we should mention that last year the Thorpeness part time fishermen John Westrup and Tony Ralph gave us their Suffolk beach boat Shady Nook, the last boat on Thorpeness beach. As it was the last boat on the beach we agonised over whether to take this boat as we were in effect helping to end the era of fishing with beach boats on the Suffolk coast. Remember a hundred years ago there were about three hundreds boats fishing off the beaches of Suffolk. There are now five boats, two of which are worked part time. However the Shady Nook had been lying out in the open for over fifty years so we took up the offer from the retiring fishermen and placed her in a barn. Due to the credit crush (or what ever it is now called) restoration will be delayed for some time. Since this is our third boat off Thorpeness beach we were asked if we were collecting them. No, it just happened. We could not bear to see an old wooden boat rot away.

 On another front, the saving of wooden boats is progressing well. Jonathan’s 34ft Leigh-on-Sea 1914 sailing cockle boat Mary Amelia was re-launched on May 23 at Mel Skeet’s Yard, Melton after a nineteen month rebuild. Shipwright Lawrence Hebson has been working on her continually and Dan Sully, a Tollesbury man, also put in several days a week.

There has always been a legend at Leigh-on-Sea that the Mary Amelia used to have a race with the fast bawley Helen & Violet, every year and in light airs she used to win. We always thought this was a bit of a tall story but when the Mary Amelia raced in the Blackwater Barge and Smack in June this year with a new mains’l, made by Steve Hall, we began to believe that the legend could be true. There was a very light wind, and although we could not get near the fast Essex smacks with their huge racing mains’ls we did overtake all the barges, except Edme, although after a battle tacking back up river with the Mirosa she just got ahead of us at the finish. We had a wonderful day out in hot weather with a good sailing breeze. Can anyone ask for more in life. 

It is also good to be associated with rebuilding of the 92ft wooden sailing barge Cambria. The Cambria is regarded by most East Coast sailors as being The Wooden Barge, not just because of her famous skipper Bob Roberts, but because she is a very handsome barge. The Cambria Trust needs all the help it can get, mostly in the form of hard cash, to fulfil the dream of getting her back under sail in about two years time. The plan is to write a book about Cambria for the Cambria Trust, but this will not be published until after the barge is in sailing order, so that we can bring the story right up to date. If you have any interesting facts about the Cambria please contact us.      

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