PS We all very much enjoy the monthly writings, thank you. Arnold was a hard act to follow but it is a super success under your navigation.

Tales of Sails and Seals - Betty Tommey remembers her summer cruise, July 2001

Our two weeks on the boat between July 7 and 21 last year was a voyage of surprises. The weather was mixed as we sailed up to Orford from the Orwell and spent a tranquil night in the Butley River and another near Aldeburgh Yacht Club. On the morning of the 10th the shipping forecast warned of strong winds and it took us three hours to sail, with main and jib well reefed, down to the Deben. With the movement of the boat continually violent in the large waves, I was sea-sick despite having taken preventative tablets. We spent that night in the Woodbridge yacht basin, the old pond serving the tidemill. On the 12th, after doing various work on the boat, we left Woodbridge at 4 PM when the tide had risen sufficiently for us to clear the sill at the mouth of the basin and sailed down to Waldringfield. The river was beautiful and the sky blue in parts but had a full range of different types of cloud as we looked across the river. Suddenly we saw a "horn" growing down from one of the clouds and we watched as this dark grey leg grew and grew towards the ground and then the lower part turned white. It was very dramatic and reminded us of the waterspout in Arthur Ransome’s Peter Duck. It was a first for all of us and we were pleased to see the explanation in the East Anglian Daily Times the next day and the excellent picture. "A spectacular weather phenomenon swept past the coast of Suffolk yesterday as wind whipped up a vast fountain of water into a funnel stretching hundreds of feet into the clouds." The paper confirmed that the "twister developed just before 6 PM and remained visible … for over 15 minutes." Apparently it was 20 metres in width. That’s exactly what we’d seen.

Later in the fortnight, after spending a couple of nights in Ipswich Yacht Haven because of bad weather, we locked out on the evening of 19 July despite the unfavourable sailing conditions: white horses in the river and the wind a good force 6/7. After picking up a mooring at Pin Mill, we had a good supper and played cards in the rocking cabin until the tide turned sometime after midnight then, with the wind and tide in the same direction, conditions aboard calmed and we turned in.

The next day was a force 5 in the river and, on jib only, we sailed as far as our rather exposed mooring on the up-river side of the entry to Suffolk Yacht Harbour at Levington. Then the four of us went ashore in the Avon Rover inflatable (3.10 metres) to explore the newly constructed flooded inlet for the birds to compensate for the area lost by the continuing spread of the container port at Felixtowe. After a survey of the new wader area, we walked to the Hand in Hand at Trimley and had a drink and lunch snack at a table outside in the sunshine. It’s surprising how different the weather can be ashore. It was hot and the wind was very gentle.

By the time we had rowed back to Calypso Lady and fastened the inflatable so it was close to the boat’s transom, the sun was going down and it was time to prepare for supper. John, always on the lookout for seals, and as disappointed as the rest of us that we hadn’t seen one during a fortnight on the boat, suddenly spotted one about 80 metres away. We just had time to focus and to distinguish it from the mooring buoys when a big ship, heading for Ipswich, came between us and the seal. Later, we were all in the cabin and Nick was sitting on the centre plate case, facing the open hatch and preparing vegetables. We were discussing the seal when he said, "there’s one in the dinghy". We thought he was joking but, leaning forward and looking through the hatch we were extremely surprised to see a seal sitting comfortably in the dinghy, looking at us with big brown eyes. My brother picked up his camera and took a few shots using a zoom lens but the light was very poor. The seal, perhaps having satisfied himself that the boat was occupied, and although in no immediate hurry to leave, took a graceful back flip over the side and was gone. Later, Nick did his routine removal of the outboard from the Avon (perhaps more important since a seal could perhaps flip the dingy and, noticing that our marine visitor had displaced the thwart, he removed that and the bailer as well. When, just before bed, we looked out to take stock of the weather, the seal was back in the dinghy, apparently fast asleep. I wondered if he (she?) was pregnant and needed a rest, but was told it was the wrong season. Then there was a suggestion that he/she was a juvenile and thought the grey rubber dinghy seemed like a friendly seal. Then Nick said he remembered when he’d been sailing in the region of the Galapagos Islands it wasn’t unusual for seals to get into yacht dinghies. However, we hadn’t heard of it happening in the Orwell.

Next morning the dinghy was empty. Nick reassembled the thwarts, the dinghy seemed none the worse for wear given its unusual visitor. Unfortunately the snaps didn’t prove much. They were under exposed due to poor light, it was hard to spot the difference between grey dinghy and grey seal. Even if no one believes this account, I can tell you we were thrilled and felt privileged to have had a wild creature voluntarily coming so close to us, not once but twice.