Welcome to all our subscribers, 1554 of you in all, including those who have recently signed up to these very occasional newsletters.
Apart from some excitement mid summer when a extra buoy was placed in the Deben entrance, it seems to have been a quiet summer and autumn. The Deben estuary is probably our most talked-about feature on our lovely coast, and indeed just this week it's hit our desks again. The Mid Knoll buoy went walkies last week, coupled with a warning from John White that the entrance has changed significantly and anyone wanting to enter or leave should ask his advice. Incredibly, we received an email from a reader in Belgium who found the buoy on the beach near Oostende! It's on its way back now but in the meantime Trinity House quickly laid a replacement buoy on station. It all certainly caused quite a stir on our Facebook page, which incidentally now has over 1100 followers.
As we mentioned before, our ECP Facebook Group page has become a prime medium for us in getting 'new news' out quickly to a wide audience. We do allow posts by readers if these are relevant, useful (and polite!!), and many of you have joined in with this which is good to see.
Here's a winter project for you - get your copy of ECP5 right up to date. I encourage you to use the Book Updates sections of our website. The easiest way to look at these is to go to our Summary by Date page, where you will find the printable lists of changes brought up to date to the end of this month. One such list is the complete set of updates since publication if you need to start from scratch. I was quite taken aback on a visit to Brightlingsea a few months ago when one of the staff harangued me (in a friendly way!) about an incorrect VHF channel in ECP's set of harbour information. We published the update for that in August last year!
Do keep an eye on our News page from time to time as well, although that has been quiet recently except for the Deben entrance story above.
Garth and I have both laid up our boats for winter and are eyeing up those work lists which never seem to get all done. The recent cold weather hasn't helped either! We are still available for talks during the winter months if any clubs are short of a speaker for a social evening - do ask if interested and one of us will step in if we can.
Until next time, then, may we wish you all a Happy Christmas and a successful 2023 out on the water.
Kindest regards,
Dick Holness
Co-author and webmaster
East Coast Pilot.
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