The Westerly Owners' Association - East Coast Group

Orwell Rally report, 12-13 September, 2009

Who says Storms list to Starboard?

Dinner at IHYC

Locking out of Ipswich dock

Down the Orwell

Saturday started pleasantly warm with only a light breeze on the river, promising a bit of sea breeze along the coast as the land warmed up, but the metman was advertising F6 for Sunday and Monday. These dire predictions persuaded some from Kent and Essex to opt out of our Suffolk rally, due to concerns about getting home.

But Vince and Irene had already made the passage from Gillingham in their Centaur and were enjoying some sightseeing from their base in Ipswich wet dock. The boats from the Tidemill at Woodbridge had the challenge of getting over their marina cill and the Deben bar to get to sea, while us locals on the Orwell had the luxury of a lie in and no need to get under way until after lunch, when the afternoon flood probably did more to carry us up to Ipswich than the wind.

We locked in to find Blix, Meltemi and Adagio already berthed at the Haven Marina, and the other boats arrived shortly after. At 1800, Rick arrived by road, signalling the start of the drinks party on Stormalong. With most folk preferring the starboard deck, it seemed like a competition to get her to list more than we had done in Blankenberge a few weeks earlier – but that’s another story. For dinner, we repaired to Ipswich Haven Yacht Club, where they had laid up a long table for us to dine together on their terrace. As an unexpected pleasure after the meal we got the Proms last night on a giant screen, so went to bed with ‘Jerusalem’ and ‘Land of Hope and Glory’ ringing in our ears.

By Sunday morning, the glass was falling although the weather had not yet broken, so, because of concerns about getting home, we decided to bring forward the Levington barbecue to a late lunch. It seemed that everybody in the dock was trying to leave a bit late that morning so the lock was chock full. The wind was getting up and whistling through the lock, which caused a large shiny Jeanneau to give us all some entertainment. Once out in the river, not many of us bothered with mainsails, genoas being enough to get us down to Suffolk Yacht Harbour. Some Deben boats headed straight home without stopping at Levington and Pat & Paul arrived by car. The giant brick barbecue fired up quickly to cook all our food, which was washed down with the leftovers from the previous day’s party. In all, a pleasant relaxing weekend in good company, both afloat and ashore.

List of participants: Vince & Irene Arnall - Blix - Centaur, Mike & Ann Claxton - Meltemi - Storm Cruiser, Rick Dines – Limelight – Oceanquest, Chris & Jan Geere - Angelica - Griffon, Paul & Pat Hand - Armorel - Warwick, Bill & Jane Kerly - Snow Queen - Griffon, Denis Meadows - Adagio - Riviera, Stephen & Hilary Morris -Travelling Light - Discus, Peter & Marta Wright - Stormalong - Storm.