This is the Sunbeam, Tollesbury's finest vessel and also (IMHO) the finest of the Essex smacks, afloat or otherwise. She has an unusually fine entry, and a beautiful sheer line.
The view of Woodup from the walkway out by Rotten Row, at the top of the tide
It was indescribably cold in the sharp wind, this chap must have had his Ready Brek
The smack yacht Ripple looking a bit sorry for herself. She was built for the Sadd family (of timber merchant fame in Maldon) and skippered by Navvy Mussett for many years, who had not a kind word to say for her. He reckoned she was built to big and shoal draft to go to windward, and she was a pig to sail. He told a story of the imperious Mrs Sadd coming on deck and demanding to know what trade the merchant vessel that was close by in the Swin was engaged in. He replied that it was a banana boat, carrying fruit of London. She disappeared below immediately when the stench of the sewage enveloped the Ripple, on a sea of prophylactics. I've a store of Navvyisms, I'll post when time allows.
Wigborough Hill across Tollesbury Fleet, with Old Hall Marsh, site of Red Hall in Baring Gould's Mehalah, invisible in between.
Memory, hull down in a stiff breeze! The bones of the finest racing barge on the East Coast. Memory had the sweetest lines. She was owned by John Kemp of Maldon, and sailed under the pennant of East Coast Sail Trust. When she was beyond safely putting to sea, in 1968, I believe, she was sold to Fellowship Afloat, and was their first floating clubhouse, before she could hold out the tide no longer, and the new lightship was purchased.
Which brings us to the subject of rebuilding, and this one's nearly ready to go back into the water. Charlotte Ellen, four feet shorter than the Sunbeam, but a fast and well-sailed smack. She has been rebuilt by Cakey Drake in his father's old boatyard that used to feature a splendid thunderbox on stilts beyond the high water mark.
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