East Coast Sailing
Another fun* weekend's sailing on the East Coast, despite a slightly greater than usual amount of faff getting the trip organised.
The crew consisted of sailing novices, including a couple of non-sailing friends, plus Phil, one of the other club skippers. On the Friday, we all made our way to Ipswich without much incident and had a tasty dinner (thanks to Phil, who got there early). Sadly we then had to go shopping, due to Tesco being useless and refusing to deliver to the marina - with the result that everyone was pretty tired before we'd even gone anywhere!
On Saturday we had a pretty relaxed start, as (due to wind and tide) I'd decided to go north towards Lowestoft, rather than south to Burnham-on-Crouch - so we didn't have to get up early for the tide. After an interesting moment in the lock on the way out, where the stern line got jammed, we had a gentle cruise down the river towards the sea. Raising sail half-way down also gave the crew an opportunity to get familiar with the sails in sheltered conditions - much tacking involved!
Once out of the river, we had a lovely sail up the coast, in near ideal conditions for novices, and sandwiches for lunch :-) After lunch we had an unexpected guest arrive - Her Majesty's Revenue & Customs! A couple of officers came on board from a RIB while the cutter stood off a few hundred meters, had a look around, to a swab, and people's details. All very friendly and civilised, and they went on their way fairly shortly.
Later in the afternoon, the wind picked up to 25 knots, and the sea got a bit bumpier. This got a bit tough on the novices, with one being unfortunate enough to become very seasick. After getting in to Lowestoft at 8:30pm or so, some of the crew were very happy to be on solid ground... especially with the excellent dinner prepared by Silke.
To catch the tide, we made a 6am start the next morning - sadly, without the seasick crew member who decided not to risk it again. In fact, the conditions were smooth and calm - we ended up motoring for 5 hours on a flat sea. The crew seemed pretty happy with this, despite the lack of sailing; at least we got a nice view of Sizewell B Nuclear power station!
Fortunately the wind picked up enough to sail in the early afternoon, so we had a very pleasant 4 hours or so sailing off Felixtowe, Harwich and the Walton backwaters, watching a racing fleet go past; plus a very gentle down-wind run run upriver to Ipswich.
*except when seasick...
.thumbnail.jpg "Racing")
- Login to post comments