Harwich power festival

In the end, a good decision to delay departure... I'm not sure it was quite as windy as expected (although it was quite breezy), but it was certainly a SW'ly, and it rained for most of the day.... Would have been a miserable journey..

Instead we jumped on the foot ferry across to Harwich and went to see the power festival... Where various lunatics drove increasingly insane boat/engine combinations at suicidal speeds... Very entertaining, and at least we didn't waste the day

Great start!

OK... so I fib!

Forecast looked ropey... forecasts with a 7 in them don't make me happy..

In reality it'll probably be a F6... but combine that with it being on the nose and with it being a 16hr+ trip, and I decded to put it off 24 hrs.... so here we are.... still in the marina

new sails

New sails finally arrived, and fitted perfectly... hoorah!

Its been a little bit of a trauma getting them though... initially promised Last week June/First week July... by 6th July i'd called to say... "OK... where are they?"

Several promised dates came and went, with me doing all the chasing, and eventually I blew my top, and was promised Friday 23rd July....

In the end didn't make it down to Morgana until Sat 24th, to discover that only the mainsail had arrived... grrrrrr

Genoa finally arrives on Monday, despite being covered in stickers saying Sat delivery.... so slight reduction in blame on sailmakers.... but they did promise them for friday... not sat!

The courier, Parcelforce, claim that they attempted a Sat delivery, but no-one was there.

Well ParcelForce, if you are going to lie, then try making it a convincing one.

The 'no-one was there' location is a 24/7 manned lock gate, which has to be manned without a break for emergency cover (its even used by the RNLI to drop off rescued boats).... and further more, on a Saturday, the place would be teeming with people... pretty shabby attempt at lying that cost me £40 in fuel to drive down and check the sails fitted...

But overall we have new sails... i'm going to enjoy that lovely crinkly noise and feel that they make for a few months!

The day approaches

Finally, after a long time (2 years!) in the making, we've got an extended summer cruise coming up.... a whole month aboard...

The target is the Channel Islands and the West Country... order to be determined by the weather and wind direction.

TYhe initial plan is to try and get two longer legs in to get down into the right part of the world as quickly as possible... perhaps Harwich to Eastbourne on Saturday, and then Eastbourne to Cherbourg or Poole/Weymouth on Sunday...

Just 3 days to the off now, and starting to get very excited!

Pirates 2011

This weekend saw the 4th installment of the now annual pirate weekend.... for those that haven't heard of this (where have you been?), its a meet up of a load of sailing friends, where we gather on a beach, build a big bonfire, BBQ, and make merry...

Its bloody good fun.

This year, the weather gods well and truly blessed us. We arrived down at Morgana Friday evening, and within an hour had slipped through the lock to what can only be described as the perfect evening... 26°, comfortably shorts and tee shirts weather, and about 16kts of wind.... it doesn't get much better!

We were at Stone point in no time and anchored quickly and easily... and thus the festivities began... over the next 24 hours, boat after boat arrived, and Saturday, also a lovely warm day, saw 70 or so of us on the beach....

a superb bonfire in the evening, lots of cremated BBQ food, a few cold beers, and great company... how could it ever be improved!

Miles logged 12nm
Miles this season 377nm
Miles since this blog started 4,957nm