Coming upstream on the River Orwell yesterday I spied Jack Coote’s old yacht, Blue Shoal on the mooring trot below Ostrich Creek. The vessel, was, I believe, Jack’s last.

Many possibly won’t know of Ostrich Creek. It is the seaward end of Belstead Brook which runs down to the salty Orwell where Fox’s Marina and the Orwell Yacht Club are situated.

Ostrich Creek was the first sailing anchorage of the inimitable Maurice Griffiths who shared a ‘tore out’ with a couple of buddies for a short while in the early 1920s. MG lived up the Wherstead Rd running into Ipswich.

Janet Harber, one of Jack’s two daughters, told me recently that Blue Shoal’s owner gives her a sail from time to time. How lovely…

I never met Jack, but I am sure my father and grandfather did back in the late 1940s and the 1950s. I would have relished the experience.

For years I have kept Janet supplied with updates for the East Coast Rivers pilot book. Updates can be obtained from the last issue publishers, Fernhurst.