The Fog on the Crouch ...

... unlike The Fog on the Tyne does not make for a good song lyric. It doesn't make for much of a trip on the river either which we'll come to shortly

I picked Jane up from the Big Shed at Six, typically of course she had to work an hours overtime when we wanted to get away sharpish (it always seems to happen). It was an easy drive down in the quite traffic of an early Saturday morning and we were soon aboard.

Jane went straight to bed whilst I idled about doing odds and sods, drank coffee and then late morning set about getting the boat ready to leave our berth.

Much to my annoyance, the tiller pilot was deader than a very dead thing. Whether the unit itself is u/s (and it's the replacement for the original that came with the boat which failed) or whether we've a power supply problem I had no time to ascertain - there does seem to be a problem with a power feed somewhere as we've suddenly started getting some intermittent odd problems around the instruments, engine controls and nav gear. It's going to be a case of physician heal thyself next week!

I could live without it for this trip as we were only heading an hour and a half downriver anyway.

As soon as we had water for the cooling inlet, I sparked up the engine to start charging the batteries (you'll recall that the battery charger ceased and desisted last week - I want to have a proper look at it before we splash out the money on a new one so we're reliant on the engine alternator to charge the batteries at the moment).

Then at just about the time I expected we were able to reverse out of the berth which had to be done smartly to avoid being swept into the pontoon or the barge next to our berth since the tide was still flooding quite hard.

It was a pleasant autumnal day but what little breeze there was was from the East so there was no point in even pretending to sail. I cracked on downriver with 2,400 RPM on the engine which gave us about 4 knots over the ground against the tide. I hadn't bothered fitting the log impeller for such a short trip on the river but we must have been making somewhat over 5 knots so my efforts with the pressure washer seem to have paid off

Jane arose as we approached The Cliffs and brewed up a welcome cup of coffee - I was gasping having forgotten to make one in the rush to leave when the tide was right and without a tiller pilot it was more faff than it was worth to make one myself

Into Burnham and the berth we'd arranged by phone earlier and then on with the TV widget to watch the rugby world cup final. I just missed the kickoff but the action had only just got under way. The widget worked well even in the confines of the Yacht Harbour and I thoroughly enjoyed the game.

Then it was time to get ready and walk down to the Royal Corinthian Yacht Club for the East Coast Forum Laying Down Supper.

A fantastic evening with wonderful people and then afters aboard their boat with Jim and Lynn made for a very late night. Well, more like the early hours of the morning to be honest!

Sunday dawned but I didn't see it! By the time we felt inclined to be up and doing it was very foggy indeed. The forecast wasn't looking good for the next 24 hours either. The best time to go seemed to be an hour or two earlier than we'd have left it otherwise but we went for it in loose company with Pleinair

Radio comms came in handy with us calling other boats out to each other and by keeping close to the Northern (starboard) bank we nearly avoided the downstream traffic who were all (with one exception) doing the right thing and keeping over to their starboard on the Southern side of the river

The exception was a rowing boat that emerged out of the murk almost dead ahead and then cut across our stern to go closer to the Northern bank which perhaps wasn't the brightest of things to do. No harm done though.

We arrived back at Fambridge with enough water to get onto our berth, just, but a good knot and a half of flood still running. I could see any attempt at a clever down tide maneouver going very wrong so we popped alongside the river pontoon for an hour or so to wait for slack water

Whilst waiting, we embarked on a quick shopping trip arriving back just in time to wave Tony and Shelagh off home. Then we settled down for the evening. Home cooked sausage casserole, a wee drop of rum and the first episode of series one of Game of Thrones entertained us until bedtime

We were not early to rise on Monday morning but it didn't matter. We sorted things out in a leisurely fashion and hit the road for home around lunchtime. The journey back was without incident or undue delay too for once but I'll be glad when the hike to and fro is an occasional excercise and not something I'm doing twice a week or more - I'm back down to the boat on Wednesday for around a week in work mode!

All in all, a pleasant weekend which would only be improved by not having to travel. Can't wait!

PS. For some reason I didn't get around to taking a single photo. So there aren't any!