2014 Spring Cruise - Day 11

The Blog app han't recorded the full track but the log is still intact ...

Things started out OK although I had not had a good nights sleep and felt tired before we even slipped our lines. This would come back to haunt me later.

As we departed Wells about two hours before High Water in the morning sunshine, we had a forecast of F3 or F4 from the East or South East, occasionally rising F5

F3 from the East we'd have take. What we got for virtully the entire trip was at least F4 from the South East and for long periods later in the day we had a solid F5 rising F6 at times from virtually dead ahead.

Initially, as has been my wont on this trip, I was determined to sail rather than motor if at all possible. On our first tack to make our offing up towards the Sheringham Shoal wind farm we went well enough, heading back towards the coast still going well. However, as time wore on the wind built and came harder on the nose. With the rising wind came an increasingly choppy sea - we had wind over tide chop on top of a swell from a slightly different direction which is never a nice combination.

I'll make no bones about it. I wasn't enjoying it much, we were going very slowly relative to our destination and I really didn't fancy being out there until the following morning in those conditions. It was clearly time to furl the sails and start the engine.

Even then, we needed 2,600RPM on the motor to make good a speed of 3.5 to 4 knots over the ground. The wind was now a very brisk 22 to 23 knots on the nose, augmented, of course, by our own speed through the air, and the tide was running foul.

Creeping as close inshore as I dared got us out of the worst of the tide and gained a good knot or more of speed in the right direction but it did mean a very careful lookout for pot markers. We'd hit a partiularly obscure one whilst sailing the other day, getting one wrapped around the prop would not be fun.

Cromer

On the up-side, we got to motor past the Norfolk coast close enough to see it and in daylight too for once!

Cromer came and went followed by Happisburgh and it's increasingly precarious looking church and lighthouse.

Mind you, the haze was reducing visibility to a few miles and at times I worried about the possibility of fog which had been mentioned

Fog worries me at sea. It's something we haven't had to deal with yet and I'd as soon avoid it if possible. #

With no radar and realistically no prospect of fitting one (cost, space, size etc.) we'd be all but blind and at the mercy of anyone not paying attention to their gizmos!


We motored on past the passage anchorage at Sea Palling. This, I think, would be OK in calm or reasonably calm conditions but it would be damned uncomfortable once the tide covererd the breakwaters with any sort of sea running

As always, photos make the sea look flat, gentle and benign. It was actually lumpy, awkward and a bit horrible.

By this stage, I was definitely developing symptoms of mal-de-mer. Or in other words I was without a doubt starting to feel seasick. A couple of Stugeron took the edge off it but when Rik took over on deck for a while I found it impossible to settle down for a rest. Within minutes of closing my eyes I started to feel queasy again and in the end it was better to be up and doing.

We saw very little in the way of other boats and shipping other than a small container ship as we approached Great Yarmouth

It's a shame there aren't better facilities at Great Yarmouth for visiting yachts - there's a rough quayside where you can wait for the bridge to lift and that's about it - as we could have got in there on the last of the light

As it was, we had a final approach to Lowestoft in the full darkness and a bit of a rolly polly ride in through the harbour entrance which required a fair amount of concentration and effort on the tiller to keep her pointing at the wet stuff and away from the solid bits.

We tied up around half ten with no sign of life in the club house. Rik had eaten whilst we were under way so I quickly warmed a tin of somthing on the stove and scoffed it down before retiring.

I am, it has to be said, slightly frustrated by how tired I am. I'm just not sleeping properly (an ongoing problem which usually clears up when on the boat) plus I've picked up a throaty cough (I'm blaming Rik but it's probably too many cigars). It was a long day yesterday for sure but it shouldn't be taking this much out of me.

Hey ho, onwards and upwards