Wednesday 5th June 2019

The good: We departed Chatham at 0400. The Marina is entered and exited from the river Medway via a lock, illustrated in the “stock” images below.

Having motored down the first stretch of the Medway, we raised the sails and then sailed all the way from Chatham to Woolverstone, only motoring for the last fifteen minutes approaching the marina. Woolverstone is on the river Orwell between Pin Mill and Ipswich in Arthur Ransome country [We Didn’t Mean to Go to Sea and Secret Water].

Below are some pictures of the Orwell, taken from Sansovino in more tranquil weather.

After an excellent day’s sailing, despite taking a new route around a wind farm which landed us in 3 knots of adverse tide and delayed us for about an hour, we arrived safely at about 1400.

The bad: Our plans have been severely disrupted by an approaching weather system, bringing gale force winds to the East Coast. We are risk averse, so will be delaying our departure from Woolverstone for at least two days!

The ugly: Nothing ugly on our boat!

Monday 27th and Tuesday 28th May 2019

A lot of work has been done on the boat since we last sailed, so we felt it necessary to have a couple of days out to ensure that the systems still worked. Christopher and George started from Chatham at 1000 on Monday 27th of May and went via the Maplin Channel up to the Gunfleet Sands wind farm, and then down the Swallowtail channel to Burnham-on Crouch, arriving at about 1800.

After a meal in our customary Indian restaurant in Burnham, we retired for the night.

We returned the next day. The distance as the crow flies is 16 NM but by sea is about 45 NM and because of the sand banks in the estuary.

We had two excellent days of sailing (about 6 hours under sail each day). Most things seem to be working OK ready for our long trip. The main worry was that the fridge failed to come on! When we got to Burnham we tried to locate a fridge repairer and having found one, couldn’t get through to him (inevitably). Anyway as a last resort George did the computer trick of turning it off, then turning it on full, and about an hour later Christopher reported ice on the cooling element, so we hope that problem might have gone away.

We managed to wash most of the decks of the boat down in Burnham until my pressure washer broke about 3/4 of the way through the job. so there is some cleaning to do en route.

We convene on the boat on Tuesday ready to set off (dictated by the tide) at about 4 a.m. on Wednesday. We’ll keep you posted on progress.

As the designated navigator (Christopher is the Skipper and Colin is currently heavily involved in his son’s wedding) I (George) have been planning the trip for a couple of weeks, deciding where we can stop, when the tides tell us to leave port and charting details of our route on a day by day basis.

Sansovino has been out of the water for cleaning and antifouling, the engine has been serviced and various pieces of equipment serviced or renewed. The picture shows her being put back into the dock at Chatham, clean and re-antifouled.

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The skipper suggested that before embarking on a 1600 mile journey we should have a trial voyage to ensure that everything works. Christopher and I will go for a two day voyage up the East coast, stopping in either Burnham-on-Crouch or Brightlingsea. We set out on Monday 27th and return on Tuesday 28th. If all is well, the main voyage round Britain anticlockwise will begin on Wednesday 5th June early in the morning.