Tudor Rose organised another delightful East Coast Meet Up for the OPYC on the Thames Barge Thalatta; cruising up and down the Orwell and Stour rivers and dining at the Suffolk Yacht Harbour on Sat 25 May.

Despite a fair weather forecast we joined the Thalatta in drizzle and following a droll briefing from Cyril the master we slipped and unlocked from Ipswich Marina and stemmed the flood tide down towards Harwich.  First man up at the wheel was Charlie Allen’s father, William.  He had been a Navigating Officer in the RN and I asked him which ships… “Well the smallest was HMSubmarine Cachalot and the biggest was the Ark Royal.  Not the newer Ark Royal but the proper one…the big one.”  We were in safe hands!

There was lots to see including the UK’s biggest container port at Felixstowe with ships big enough to block the Suez Canal, big red lightships swinging at the Trinity House buoys, The Royal Hospital School at Holbrook and even Grayson Perry’s green tiled house.  A delicious lunch preceded an attempt to sail.  Whilst it was fun to get the sails out and see how this 90 ft barge could be handled by ‘a man, a boy and a dog’, there wasn’t really enough wind so we motored back in glorious sunshine to be back in time for dinner at the old Cromer lightship which serves as the clubhouse for Suffolk Yacht Marina.

OPs in attendance - Jeremy Owen, Ian Williams, Andy Roy, William Allen (55-59), Charlie Allen (85-90), Miles Gordon-Smith, Tom Bendall, Tudor Rose, James Minter