It's all a bit choppy!

Today was supposed to be a nice 6 hour cruise round to Harwich....... It started out lovely, we said goodbye to Lowestoft, we have quite enjoyed being here. There is such a variety of boats passing through there's always something to see. We had originally intended to stop at Southwold but decided to push on a bit as we had stayed for two days in Lowestoft. We expected a relatively calm, easy run. Martyn planned the best time to go in order to gain some benefit from the tide. The first two hours were great, we were doing over 8 knots and the sea was lovely. One thing I did notice though was that the water had changed from the lovely green colour further up the coast to a muddy sandy colour - maybe a reflection of what was to come. The sea started to become slightly more choppy and it got a bit colder. We passed a power station that was being overlooked by a very imposing ship that said GUARD on it. As we progressed the sea continued to become worse, we heard a met office forecast broadcast over the radio - force 3-4 sometimes 2 or 5........ There was an enormous clatter from the under the kitchen sink. I looked and saw a pool of blue liquid pouring out of the cupboard. Upon opening the cupboard I discovered all our pans sitting in a pool of blue glupey liquid - fabric softener! I quickly moved all the other cleaning products from the cupboard to a more secure area, but it was too late for the pans!! Thus continued approx 5 hours of Martyn trying to take us safely through the waves and the ever present crab pots and me running round like a mad woman trying to hold things in place or pick up broken glasses etc. Luckily I had stowed the champagne (our leaving presents) on the bed....... It was actually quite good fun, just hard work and it took so much longer than we anticipated! Elephant Daze had a ball! This wasn't the end of it. The sailing boats were out in force, it was the perfect weather for them. They also decided that they were all coming into the same marina as us at exactly the same time so Martyn really had his hands full making sure we didn't get in their way! It's a shame that we didn't get as good a reception at this marina as the last one, we were received with a great deal of warmth at Lowestoft, the same can't really be said for here unfortunately.

I recall a conversation with the nice chap who supplied us with the diesel yesterday. I commented on how good the weather was and he said it was nice for motor boating but not for sailing. I replied with the comment "What's good for one is not always good for other" He also said that the weather was due to be good over the weekend - good for one but not necessarily good for the other......