5 a.m. again

I normally sleep well in Robinetta, but last night I kept waking up, and when I did I would go over in my mind exactly how we would get off the berth. We had been blown on to it, so I feared being lee shored. When the alarm went (another 05:00 wake up call) Julian and I discussed it while the kettle boiled. Springing off the bow and motoring backwards seemed the only way possible, and as soon as we stuck our heads into the cockpit and felt no wind at all everything seemed easier, and the plan worked like a charm. Julian did have to push the boat astern with his hand to stop their outboard from touching Robinetta, but that was our only contact with the three tightly packed boats. The owner of the inner most yacht, who had helped us moor, appeared on the pontoon and waved as we motored away.

We were out of the harbour by 05:50, heading into a gently rolling sea.

We needed to make 4 knots to reach Arbroath before the lock gates closed, and at first it did not look promising. Robinetta was making less than 3.5 knots as we headed towards St. Abbs head. Checking our tide charts later we realised that the tide was against us here as it ebbed out of the Forth. The light wind in the stay sail was just created by our forward motion, but as we cleared the headland the wind seemed to have some west in it, and the staysail started drawing.

Once we left St. Abbs head and its contrary tide behind our speed picked up a little, but the thought of trying to helm in a straight line for nearly 40nm with no aiming points for the first 20 had Julian deciding to put "George" to work, and as soon as he lashed the tiller pilot in place the trip became less daunting. It began to drizzle, but the wind also increased and we got the main sail up and see if it would help our speed. With the main, and no 1 jib we were motor sailing at 4.5 knots, and making Arbroath began to feel possible (we would have diverted to Anstruther which was a 10 mile shorter trip if we had to). The forecast was for variable winds, and we could not rely on our lovely breeze to stay for the whole trip, so the engine stayed on, as it helped bring the wind round enough to fill the sails.

We seemed to be making amazingly good time, until Julian had a look at his phone and discovered that it was an hour later than we thought. At some point in the morning our chart plotter has switched from BST to GMT. He tried to work out why, and discovered that we had our plotter set to "automatic" local time rather than BST. He thinks that a satellite update might have caused a reset. We were not too worried though. 15:30 for arrival at Arbroath was still plenty of time.

The drizzle was not constant, but the wind stayed with us until after lunch, sometimes bringing our speed up to 6 knots, at which point Julian throttled back on the engine. We were still making 5 knots when I went on watch (much easier when not helming as well), but after about 15 minutes George put himself on standby. I noticed immediately and reset him, and he worked throughout lunch before glitching to standby again. Another reset worked, but soon after he lost power totally.

Luckily we could see the Bell Rock by this point, so there was a point of reference to help with the steering. Then the lovely wind faded away, and we were down to the unassisted engine to get us the last 12 miles to Arbroath. A good aiming point appeared on the land, the engine was taking us along at 4 knots and we were well ahead of schedule....

The harbour master at Hartlepool had told us to take on fuel before entering the inner harbour of Arbroath, but there was no mention of fuel being available in the CA Almanac. I radioed Arbroath as we approached the harbour, and the HM confirmed its existence and told us where it was. He was waiting on the fuel dock as we got there, so we filled our tanks and our spare cans. He then walked round to the pontoons in the inner harbour, and showed us where to moor Robinetta. We were securely tied up by 16:30, with 2 hours in hand for the lock gates closing.

Three days of early starts and long days had brought us 120 miles further north. We had been made welcome in all our stop overs, and seen some lovely scenery, but had it been a cruise? The rough overnight passages of our first two weekends northward bound seemed long ago. We had managed some sailing every day, and not been out after dark, so yes, we had been cruising for the first time in too long.

A coast line with castles

The alarm went at 5 a.m. for the second day in a row, but this time we had our cup of tea before getting up. We had not stowed much away on arrival in Amble, there did not seem any point putting the sail covers on when there was no sun to damage the sails, so it did not take long to prepare Robinetta for sea. It had been drizzling ever since we arrived in Amble and was actually raining as we backed out from the pontoon, but by 06:02 when we cleared the harbour mouth it had stopped. 

This was looking like an all engine, very gray day. The light following wind was just strong enough to waft the exhaust fumes back into the cockpit, which made things worse. However Walkworth Castle through the early morning haze created an atmospheric scene and as we passed Dunstanburgh castle the sun began to be visible through the cloud, and by the time we were passing Bamburgh Castle we were in bright sunshine. But there was still no wind.

For some reason both Julian and I were hungry. Porridge for breakfast, then a cup of soup rather than tea still left a gap to be filled by an apple, then biscuits with another cup of tea...

As the views of Lindisfarne Castle faded into the distance the wind began to strengthen, and a course change let us try sailing. We rigged the gybe preventer and had a couple of hours under sail while we ate lunch, as we still had room after all those snacks. Unfortunately our time to destination was getting rather late. so the engine went back on at 13:30. We were pointing straight at Berwick on Tweed (no obvious castle!) when we decided to stop sailing and Julian pointed out that this was the problem with having a set destination. With no time constraints we would  sailed to Berwick rather than motored to Eyemouth, but doing that would have left us no chance of reached Arbroath on Monday.

We reached Eyemouth at 16:30 and called to announce we were entering the harbour as instructed by the CA Almanac. The Harbour master replied, and directed us to a berth on what we had been told was the visitor pontoon. This seemed to have changed, as there were a lot of fishing boats on it, and the sign was crossed through, but there was a nice clear area where we had been told to moor up.

The HM met us there, but decided we would be better on the "town" side of the quay if we could fit in a tight space between a trip rib, and 2 small rafted up yachts. We looked over at it, and Julian agreed. He went to pay for the mooring first, as it would have been a long walk round to the office from the new berth. I bottled out of getting Robinetta into the tiny gap, so Julian took over and wriggled her in perfectly. The owner of one of the small yachts came and helped to take the lines, and offered advice, which was not relevant to our long keeler!

Eyemouth means ice cream with 2 award winning makers in the town. Julian and I bought a tub each and ate while we walked to the Co-op for provisions, wandering along the narrow roads to the shore front. We were too tired from our early start to do much sight seeing, but we did put the sail covers on, and filled our diesel tanks from our cans, before setting our alarm for another 5 a.m. start.