The Blackwater Gathering
  • Programme
  • Boats
  • The hard
  • Tickets
Apply for a berth
11–13 June 2027  ·  Maldon, Essex

Three tides, one river, and nothing under a hundred years old

A gathering of working sail on the Blackwater: smacks, barges and bawleys, sailed by the people who maintain them. No arena, no commentary box, and the programme runs on the tide rather than the clock.

Apply for a berth
Free from the sea wall. Berths and crew places by application.
Boats expected
0
Yards opening their doors
0
Years it has run
0

Three days on the tide

Friday — the boats come up on the tide

Arrivals from midday, which is to say from whenever the water allows. The best two hours of the weekend are the ones nobody schedules: forty hulls working up a narrowing river under sail, in whatever order the wind gives them.

Saturday morning — inside the sheds

Four yards open their doors. You can watch a plank steamed and hung, a scarph cut, and a hull being sprung to a mould, and ask the shipwright why it is done that way rather than the way the book says. The answer is usually about this river.

Saturday afternoon — rigging, rope and sail

Splicing, seizing, serving and sailmaking, at benches, with the work in your hands rather than on a screen. Bring gloves. The rope is tarred and the tar does not come off for a week.

Sunday — the match, if the wind allows

A working match round the Nass and back, sailed by crews who will be at work on Monday. If there is no wind there is no match, and there is no substitute arranged, because a substitute would be a different event pretending to be this one.

And then the tide goes out

By late Sunday the river is mud and the boats are sitting on it. People stay anyway. More gets settled about next year in those three hours on the hard than in any meeting we have ever called.

How the days run

Boats work up from midday on the young flood. Nothing is scheduled, because the tide is not negotiable.

Four yards open from 09:00. Rigging and sailmaking benches run all afternoon; nothing is repeated, so choose.

Start gun at 10:40 if there is wind to start on. Round the Nass and back, no handicap, no prize but the one.

Boats dry out from about 15:00. Everyone ends up on the hard, and that is where next year gets decided.

The only gathering where the people who sail the boats are the people who fixed them, and you can tell within five minutes.
Ellen Pyefinch
Shipwright, Tollesbury

Why it is worth the tide

It is free to watch from the sea wall and always will be. If you want to be on a boat, apply early — crew places go to people who will still be here on Sunday afternoon, helping to put things away.