Blog

We were driving to Ipswich on the A14 in heavy rain, but by the time we stepped out of the car in the carpark at Fox's to everyone's relief it had stopped. We got underway at around 8.00pm and motored down the Orwell into a fairly strong headwind. By the time we made it to Harwich the wind had dropped a little but the sea state was quite choppy, We pressed on, still motoring, as I was keen to get into Walton as soon as possible and get dinner started. It was quite tight getting into Walton, with a brief sounding of 1.6m on the depth gauge at the shallowest point at the entrance to the river. We ended up eating at around midnight, and getting to bed for around 1.30am.

We made an early start on Saturday morning, sailing off the mooring buoy at about 8.00am, gybing down the river and sailing out of Walton. The weather was very good, with an increasing amount of sun breaking through the clouds through the day, a consistent 15knt easterly wind, and a very calm sea state. We made it all the way down the Wallet, and into Brightlingsea for about 3.30pm. We must have averaged about 8knts of boat speed all day, with the highest speed recorded being 9knts reaching into Brightlingsea before dropping the sails and being escorted in by a very friendly member of the harbour staff.

Our early arrival into Brightlingsea meant we had a lot of time to enjoy the evening, getting the dingy out and going ashore for a beer at Colne Yacht Club, before heading back to the boat and cooking a really nice spaghetti bolognese and enjoying a couple of bottles of beer and wine and swapping Valentine's day stories.

We again made an early start on Sunday to make sure we got back to Harwich in good time. At first we were motoring out of Brightlingsea in an almost dead calm, but that made for some very nice photos and a relaxing breakfast of scrambled egg and coffee on deck. The wind started to pick up as we got further out to sea and we hoisted the sails soon after. We had another beautiful day of sailing doing long tacks inshore and then right out close to the wind farm beating up the Wallet. Again the tide was with us so we made very good progress, again averaging about 8knts of boatspeed upwind!

We got to Shotley at about 2.00pm and picked up a mooring buoy on the other side of the radar tower to wait for a little more water under the keel and to have some lunch. We left Shotley at about 4.00pm and sailed down the Orwell until the wind finally died around the RHYC.

I had a really good and fun crew, everybody got involved in sailing and mooring the boat, and Sarah in particular was very good with trimming the headsail. We had some really good food and some good laughs which made the weekend even better. Lucy was a very good first mate and was very helpful all weekend.