We spent five lovely days on a mooring buoy on the River Ore enjoying a combination of local cheese, BBQ and the Euro tournament in the sunshine. We aren't usually huge football followers but we decided to get competitive and ended up watching most of the games & probably used it as an excuse to drink cold beer in the afternoons.
We were keeping an eye on the weather forecasts though anticipating when we might have a good window to leave the River Ore and move onto Lowestoft.
To leave the river we had to make sure that we were leaving on a rising tide - just in case we did touch bottom. We were also a little anxious as when we entered the river we had heard a faint knocking sounds coming from underneath the boat and were worried that we had some fishing line caught around the propeller (we spotted a fisherman casting his line from the back on the way in). I did brave the water and inspect it whilst we were on the mooring but the water was so murky I couldn't really see anything. This combination of challenges were in the back of my mind as we slipped our minds but I am pleased to report that the noise disappeared and all seemed OK.
We we made our way down the river and approached the mouth we noticed a patch of choppy and confused sea. This forms due to the sand banks and cross tides. This time the cross tide really took hold of the boat and I had to steer well off course to ferry glide us through the narrow channel in a straight line and it was quite a battle. To make matters worse there was another boat coming in under sail and as the rules of the road suggest, the sailing vessel has right of way over motor aka US at this point as we were motoring. This meant that I had to move over even closer to shore which already felt uncomfortably close. It's a good job that we left with enough water as according to the chart plotter we were directly on top of a mud bank.
As much as I really admire people that sail into places and I am certain they are better sailors that I will ever be but part of me can't help but think it does make situations like these difficult for others around in you in close quarters. To be fair, I am sure he was just as unhappy seeing us coming round the corner as we were to see him so we all exchanged a standard wave to the fellow sailor and carried on with our journey.
Once we were out of the channel and the depth gauge started to increase we could relax a little and put our minds to the next task of raising the sails, something that we have now gotten used to and can do a lot quicker than when we first left. It felt like we were starting to find our rhythm and understanding we we needed to do.
For us this is, turn the boat into the wind and switch the auto pilot on to keep us facing into the wind (hoping it doesn't shift midway). I then go to the mast to manually haul the main sail up whilst Lauren takes in the slack on the winch in the cockpit and adds the final bit of tension to get the sail fully hoisted. We then take control of the steering and bear away onto our course and trimming the main sail. Once this is done we can focus on unfurling the heal sail and getting it trimmed.
The wind was a perfect 12/13 knts on a beam reach (wind on the side of the boat) so feeling pleased with ourselves we sailed on for 1.5 hours before the wind switched to the opposite side and we we came closer to the wind the boat heeled over and were smashing into the waves but such is life with sailing!
The journey was meant to take 6 hours but it ended up taking around 8 - although it felt like 12.
We came into Lowestoft at around 20:00, just missing the bridge lift. This meant that we had to wait on the visitors pontoon inside the commercial basin to the right of the harbour. We didn't fancy going into Royal Suffolk Yacht Haven as it was already extremely busy.
Once we had spoken to Port Authority and arranged a bridge lift for 21:00, we made our way down to the lovely Lowestoft Cruising Club. We were greeted here by a generous hammerhead but did panic for a moment when we checked the depth reading which was around 2.0m on an ebbing tide. Luckily we had enough water to keep us out of the mud and we treated ourselves to a delivery pizza.
We must also mention that within just a few hours of our arrival we managed to set the clubhouse alarm off and wake the marina manager up at 23:00 when the delivery driver phoned his mobile number on the sign as he couldn't get into the marina. I guess that's one way of letting him know we had arrived.
Lowestoft area was quite industrial from the small area that we saw but allowed us to go to the shop and supplies in preparation for our first night passage to Grimsby.
Adam
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