The tides were at civilized times for traveling down the Wallet from the Backwaters to the Blackwater, so Julian pulled up the anchor at 08:40, and we headed out through the entrance channel under sail. The morning's forecast was for light winds, but getting rather nasty (force 6-7 with thunder storms) in the evening.
The light winds were in a good direction, Easterly/South Easterly, so being used to slow travel we kept sailing at 2.5 to 3 knots even when all the boats around us put their engines on and over took us. Slow or not we arrived at Brightlingsea before 16:00, having taken just over 7 hours, with less than an hour of engine.
The weather was oppressively hot and even after a shower in the yacht club I could not persuade myself to head up to the high street to shop. Julian and I ended up eating at the Harbour Bar, since it had air conditioning...
We were not expecting the storms until 22:00, but they arrived two hours earlier, with an amazing display of lightening. We headed back to Robinetta in a hurry!
As we were relaxing on board we noticed a yacht trying to moor on the other side of the pontoon. A single handed sailor had just arrived, exhausted, after a trip down the Wallet in wild winds and thunderstorms that had knocked his boat Tomboy down. We helped him moor, then headed back to Robinetta, glad we had managed to time our trip down the Wallet to avoid the bad weather.
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