Yesterday we had a lovely day on the beach at Wells. We both got stripey suntans - remember the perfect English tan....? I actually managed to burn my feet and Martyn swam in the channel we had sailed up only the day before. It was just lovely - so relaxing, I believe England won their first match of the world cup. We didn't watch it - sorry - but Wells became a hive of excitement around 5 pm with lots of drunk people swimming in the Harbour and the infamous sound of the bazooka - who thought that was a good idea?
Anyway - nothing much to report from yesterday - today was a little more interesting. We set off around 5am - yes - these early starts are becoming a habit. We circumnavigated the very confusing channel back out to sea and made it unaided - amazingly! We followed the coast noting various different seaside towns that Martyn had visited as a child on holiday, Sherringham, Cromer etc.
Anyway - nothing much to report from yesterday - today was a little more interesting. We set off around 5am - yes - these early starts are becoming a habit. We circumnavigated the very confusing channel back out to sea and made it unaided - amazingly! We followed the coast noting various different seaside towns that Martyn had visited as a child on holiday, Sherringham, Cromer etc.
Initially the tide took control and we were making good time, our only concern was looking out for crab pots, which there are many of, so I was on crab pot watch! We were approaching the Hemsby coastline which hosts a windfarm consisting of approx 40 wind turbines. The chart shows a channel for 'ships' as Martyn told me. "How do you know it's just for ships?" I ask, "Well everyone else just goes South side on that small channel" "OK - if you're sure". So on wards we went keeping close to the shoreline, then........ 5ft, 4ft, 3ft, 2.5ft of water left underneath..... "Let's head for the shipping channel - quick!" I'm sure people do use the lower channel but for some reason we ran out of water, it added at least an hour maybe more onto our journey as the tide changed and we were down to 3 knots fighting it. We finally landed in Lowestoft about three hours later than expected. We put the right call out asking for permission to enter the harbour and thought we had it all under control. No problem - we were granted permission and made our way in..... then it all went a bit Timothy Spall..... We were looking for the ABP marina and ended up in the trawl dock. The Harbour Master politely advised us of our error. Further embarrassment was to come when we couldn't find the marina we were looking for, and had to ask for help over the radio. We were finally helped by a lovely chap on a sailing boat who took us into the ABP marina. This wasn't the end of the nightmare however. Martyn had called the marina on the radio, they had advised that they could see us and could we meet them at the fuel quay? What fuel quay? Unknown to us the two marinas within the Port use the same VHF channel. We were talking to the wrong marina.... Luckily for us we found some very nice people within the marina who were very happy to help two Yorkshire numpties who were lost in Port - never mind at sea! In our defense the signs for the marina don't tell you where to go and the marina itself is unmanned - ABP really need to make it more user friendly, although they are very helpful when you finally get to speak to someone and the resident boaters were lovely ! So here we are, in Lowestoft, wondering if we should venture into the Norfolk broads or just head South - what do you reckon?
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