Friday/ Saturday 10 – 11 June. Whitby to Lowestoft. 150 nm

A long way! This is the longest bit of the trip. We had abandoned the idea of going to Grimsby due to various tidal constraints and timings. Proved to be the right decision. Friday morning dawned sunny. With a breeze blowing from the SW. perfect! And it did for once turn out to be a brilliant sailing wind in the right direction for the entire 24 hour voyage. Not many times that’s happened!We left Whitby at 1105 when the swing bridge opened. We were sad to leave this lovely town. Pottering towards the entrance it was so easy to imagine how it would have been in the 1700s with all the harbour lined with boats and taverns alive alive o. Leaving the harbour behind us the sea looked very different to when we arrived! We turned right, along with our friends from Serenity ( the westerly storm). I did take lots of pictures of you! We’ll email them! We set up a watch system., Having this discipline is good as it makes the time go quickly and does allow for some rest. So …..the on watch person is basically on the helm ( or in charge of the auto helm), second person is in charge of keeping them company, looking out for lobster pots and generally being helpful! Third person can rest. Julian did of course have one eye open all the time! As I said the wind was kind. Blowing from the SW meant the water was flattish. The strength varied between 10-17 knots the whole way, which meant we went the first 140 miles on one tack. To begin with we had one reef in, but took it out when the evening approached as the wind dropped slightly. Lowestoft has no tidal constraints so we could go as fast as possible……. and we were averaging 6.6 , top notch 10 knots… it felt like we were going like a train! We waved bye to Serenity as they dived off towards Scarborough. We were alone on our way to the south. Soon we were leaving land behind and heading out to sea, crossing the entrance to the Humber and then the Wash. we ate the pasta bolognese which I’d prepared earlier and Julian heated up. The sun set over one of the many wind farms we passed. the moon shone brightly on our starboard side. We all noted how strange it was that lobster pots completely disappear at night. 🤔 . wind farms are lit up by white light at the base and a red light at the top of each turbine . So there are great fields of lights. Then there’s shipping lights and navigation marks. Some are moving and some stationary. Having the chart plotter you can match up the lights you see with what’s on the chart. It even has the boats on so that really helps with interpretation of what you’re seeing! Usually! One rather interesting moment was a green light in the distance in front of us which was getting bigger quite quickly. Not on the plotter until it appeared apparently right in front of us, it was another sailing boat which we passed quite close to in the end, but maybe the dark made us just feel it was! Time passed and so approached the mile stone moment of our 1000th mile!!! We celebrated by having an orange club biscuit ! Julian and I were on watch as the sky lightened into a beautiful dawn. The colours a mixture of yellow oranges and blues in what appeared to be a cloudless sky. We saw the first blip of a huge orange sun peep above the horizon. Magical. That was about 4 am. Another 40 miles to go. Eventually we rejoined the coast. We had left England in Yorkshire and rejoined in Norfolk! This coast becomes very shallow and the last 2 hours are tricky navigating as you have to keep going from buoy to buoy down the deeper channel. This was the first time since leaving that we had to tack! Eventually we arrived outside the harbour and took down the sails. It had been an amazing nights sail. One which we will all remember. We had been truly blessed with wind strength, direction and tides. The whole trip took exactly 24 hours. We tied up in the marina of the Royal Norfolk and Suffolk yacht club. We then all went to 😴 sleep for about 5 hours. Tired but exhilarated and relieved to be here. Later in the evening Sue joined us eventually having had the usual train nightmare journey, and we re-celebrated🥂!

What I learned today…… Night sailing is not I think something I will ever love, but this trip will go into the special memory folder for sure.

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Sue x

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