Summer Weekend Day 3

Log:



Today was a funny old day.

The forecast was northerly or Nor'easterly 4 or 5 occasionally 6 in the South of the area so I clipped in the first reef on the main before we started up and let go.

With the big spring tides this weekend we had to wait until the flood had made a coupe of foot so our departure wasn't particularly early. The timings though were nice for putting us over the Raysand around half tide with plenty of flood left for the run upriver

I had her sailing straight away beating out of the Blackwater against the tide in a solid F4 with occasional gusts up to 20 knots. With her weedy bottom Erbas needed all the breeze she could get!

Unlike yesterday however, this time I was able to get her nicely settled into the groove. Initially close hauled, and having to put in a couple of tacks to stay off the lee shore, and then reaching with a reef in the genoa as well as the main, she cracked along nicely.

However, once we cleared Start Point and turned downwind we lost boat speed drastically. Of course, we were now heading away from the wind thus reducing the apparent wind across the deck but the breeze had also dropped and there just wasn't enough power in the sails to make good headway. And, of course, we were towing the new (to us) tender which tows nicely but obviously adds drag

I briefly toyed with the idea of deploying Scary Sail but Jane was feeling queasy in the, it has to be admitted, rather unpleasant choppy sea so it was on with the engine and get a move on

There were a surprising number of boats in the Ray'sn. About a dozen yachts followed us down and a couple more headed north.

None of them had read my blog or forum posts though and we were the only boat to cut across to the Outer Crouch No.3 (actually, I think we were inside that too). Once again we never saw less than about 3m all the way across and the sands appear to be pretty flat and only just drying. Must get down there on a calm day and have a proper look sometime.

Once in the river and out of the chop, Jane made us some toast which improved her mood to the point where she force fed me the rest of the bacon from the fridge (she did very kindly cook it first)

To my utter disbelief, the North wind had now become a Nor'wester and I really couldn't be doing with mucking about so it was motor on upriver

Tied up on the pontoon back at base we crashed out for a couple of hours before eating on board and then heading to the pub for a couple of drinks

A typical day of East Coast sailing really!