Down the Wallet

Woke up to a perfect sailing day, bright sunshine and a nice fresh breeze. I thought the wind was a bit too fresh for our no1 jib, but Julian thought we'd be okay, and he was right.

We sailed off the mooring at 0930, just before high water Wrabness, and were past Harwich Shelf cardinal by 1100 after a gorgeous sail down river. The wind felt stronger once we rounded the Naze and began to fine reach, so we dropped the stay sail once we passed the tower at 1200.

We put a reef in and changed down to the no2 jib (with the staysail up again) to have lunch in comfort, but the wind felt more on the nose all the time, and we were beating to no effect by the radio tower at New Holland for a long time before we gave up and put the engine on at 1415. We normally try to work the tide in the Wallet, but the timing would not just not work for that today.

Despite keeping the stay sail up to steady us Robinetta rolled uncomfortably, and the engine at full tilt is not restful. We unfurled the jib, and motor sailed with the foresails only as they let us sail closer to the wind than the main.

Both the engine and us had had enough by 1600, so we put the full main up again and began to beat against the tide again. We saw Deirdre well inshore of us, motor sailing with the main up. She pulled ahead of us before we reached North Eagle where a gust made us decide to put a reef in the main again.

We got round Colne Bar at 1815 and began beating up the Blackwater, but we were both tired having been on the go for nine hours, so at 1905 we gave up trying to sail, put the motor on, and got the main down. The parel line had worn through at some point, and Julian only found one of the beads (although I found another later hiding in the staysail folds). We need to make/buy some more.

We got onto the mooring at 2030. I'd done a fair bit of tidying up while Julian helmed us past the Nass Beacon, but it still took another 45 minutes to pack, get the sails stowed, and put the covers on before we were ready to leave. We won't be back for three weeks, so I took most of the food off with us. Our preserved chorizo, which is supposed to be good until September, had gone mouldy, so we'll need a new one.

Worm was very full of baggage, but with only an hour to go before high water we headed for the slipway rather than the pontoon and soon had everything in the car.

It felt like a very long trip home, especially compared to the lovely fast sail on Friday.