Gales and what not.

Weather looked a little better, but too windy for racing, so the fleet set off for Walton Backwaters, not racing. Being at the inside end of the pontoon we were near the back of the group, and needed a lot of boats to move before we could. That meant we were not at the lock out of Ipswich dock until free flow started at 1200; not a problem!

With gusts forecast of up to force 6 we decided to reef more than we ever had before, and untied the sail from the first hoop and reefed all the way down to the second. With that and the stay sail we had more than enough sail up to make over 6 knots down river with the tide, but in the calmer airs we only made 3.

Once past Pin Mill the wind steadied, and we were broad reaching on a lovely point of sail, but by the time we were at Levington we were very glad of the small sail area. We spotted Nancy Blackett heading back up river and shouted over as to why, and were told it was very rough and windy in the bay. She was not the only one returning, and after we saw several other boats turn back we decided to abort our trip to Walton too.

We were just by Fagbury when we turned for shelter, and Bernard from Molly Cobbler said he recorded 37 knots of wind there. I think we had something similar. Pete on Transcur used a hand held anemometer on the deck out in the harbour, and measured 43 knots. Only one boat, Rely, a 20 tonner made it to Walton. Everyone else turned back after experiencing the seas near the Dovercourt breakwater and took shelter.

Beating up the river against the wind and tide was no fun, and once we were mostly headed we got the sails down. We had just done that when we were hit by a rain squall that felt more like hail and reduced visibility to almost nothing. That left us making very slow progress up river on the engine, so we got the stay sail back up, and crawled back up to Pin Mill where we dropped the anchor close to five other gaffers at 1520 and had a cup of tea.

The anchor dragged once in a really strong gust, so we reset it, then cooked the dinner we had planned for Walton. The wind had eased considerably, and the anchorage was sheltered so it felt comfortable. By the time we had tidied up it was nearly low water, and we wanted to wait to see how Robinetta swung on her anchor. After she had swung round, clearing the closest moored boat by a good ten foot, we got into Worm and headed ashore. The plan was to beach the dingy then walk to the Butt and Oyster pub at Pin Mill.

Worm rowed as beautifully as always and we easily reached the rather muddy shore, then pushed her anchor into the muddy sand well up the “beach” near to a marker bucket left by one of the other gaffer’s tenders. Apart from not finding the best way up onto the short path, so getting a bit muddy going round the seaward side of the houseboats everything went to plan and we joined a pub full of gaffers full of their stories of the day’s rather hectic sailing.

We were back on board Robinetta by 2230, and I put on the GPS to do a final check of her position since the triangulation marks I had picked for my anchor drag checks were day marks only. The position looked a little odd, as though she had skipped a couple of meters while the GPS was switched off, but Julian watched it for a while and thought it was just acquisition error. I went down to brush my teeth, and suddenly Julian called me to come see. We were very close to the moored boat we cleared easily before rowing ashore.

We had a lot of chain out to cope with the windy conditions, but we were obviously not securely anchored, so Julian pulled up the chain and found out why we were dragging as he did. A loop of chain had wrapped round one of the anchor flukes and pulled it out. Given how late it was we motored off and found an empty mooring to pick up instead of re-anchoring.