Katie headed back to London and I took the train back to Saxmundham and a bus onto Aldeburgh. The engine fault turned out just to be some badly corroded electric switches in the panel.
My new crew, Anton and Philip, met on the train from Liverpool St and got a cab to Aldeburgh. I picked them up around 8pm as the sun was starting to set. Pretty soon we were sailing in darkness…
We reached the anchor point I’d chosen (NB I had the engine on much earlier than the previous attempt!) We had a good quiet night on the anchor and set off around 6:00am the following day in glorious sunshine.
Even Anton was happy.
We passed the scary Shingle Street without any issues and soon we were motoring up to Lowestoft in glorious sunshine.
Unfortunately there wasn’t that much wind although we did have a good couple of hours on the spinnaker.
We spent a night at the Royal Corinthian Marina which was expensive and completely characterless. Its only benefit is its position, just inside Lowestoft Port.
We walked into town and were pretty shocked by the state of the High Street. Lovely old buildings completely inundated in noisy seagull nests and crap everywhere.
Everyone we met though was delightfully friendly, but it’s not a healthy looking town center. Mobility scooters, vape shops and seagulls. But we found an excellent pizza restaurant and had a good night. There are some lovely spots.
Next morning, Philip and I swam off the beach and I fetched breakfast materials from M&S. The forecast was for brisk Northerlies that I didn’t fancy battling against into unknown seas.
Our plan therefore was to head in-land and maybe sail as far as Beccles. This meant passing through the bascule bridge to access the inner harbour. On the VHF, the harbour master asked about my ‘air-draft’ I misheard and told him our actual draft of 1.5m and he muttered something about us being fine.
We passed through the small bascule bridge into the Inner Harbour. There up ahead was an enormous bridge that I hadn’t expected at all…
My Pilot Book was 15 years old and this massive Gul Wing bridge was opened in 2024! We motored cautiously towards it and were radioed to stay where we were and what did we mean we only had 1.5m ‘AIR draft’… ?
They opened it for us and we chugged through, imagining the curses on the now halted dual carriageway above.
Alas the heatwave had jiggered the next railway bridge, so we were forced to abandon hopes of going further inland and we tied up in the delightful Lowestoft Beacon Marina.
We spent an afternoon chilling in the marina. Well, once the crew had cleaned the boat and I’d shimmied up the mast obvs,
The next day (or was it that afternoon?) we decided that we ought to have a sail – with the stiff Northerlies further North, heading up coast wasn’t an option, but heading straight out to sea definitely was – we’d have a beam reach out and back. We got prepped and headed out into a bouncy Force 4.
We motored out in the channel against the wind – a strong Southerly. Eventually we decided to raise the main. I went forward and clipped on in the bouncy seas. I pulled on the halyard and – disaster – the shackle hadn’t been properly attached – in fact, subsequent film footage shows it had been detached from the main for a while. Somehow I hadn’t noticed…. (Always check!)
I pulled on the halyard, the rope shot up, the shackle went flying overboard… I swore loudly. I crept back to the cockpit. We’d taken at least an hour of bashing to get to this point and now we were going to turn back… the working end of the halyard was swinging about out of reach.
We turned round and started heading back.
Going with the waves and the wind behind us, it was now a lot calmer and the halyard was now at least generally closer to the mast. We decided to attempt a halyard rescue. We set the speed as close as we could to the wave speed to keep the halyard from bouncing. I tied onto the mast and stood up with the boathook. It took about ten minutes of agonisingly near misses, but eventually I got the boathook through the halyard’s spliced eye and pulled it down. Then we used two smaller shackles to join the halyard to the main and we back were in business! We turned around and pretty soon we were pelting out to sea on a heavily reefed beam reach.
We had a great sail. But heading North would have to wait…
