Sailing.......... and loving it

We only managed Thursday and Friday with a night in Brightlingsea. Watching the HM (two actually) literally shoving the gaffers and others out their berths near low water was a treat :) The person playing a fiddle in his cockpit at 0700 evoked some negative comments from boats nearer to it than we were.

Unfortunately we had to go to a party and eat and drink all afternoon today or we would have stayed out.

Great. Full of happiness etc etc.
 
Lovely weather this weekend. Sadly we missed much of it as we couldn't get to the boat before late Sat afternoon, and had foolishly arranged to visit father-in-law for lunch Sunday.

But we did have a lovely evening sail up the Stour, anchored near the north shore between Wrabness and Mistley (can't remember the name of the place), and had a particularly fine supper.

Went to bed about midnight and slept well in complete calm until woken about 2.30am by ghastly loud music from the shore - some sort of rave (is that term yet as out of date as 'disco'?) on the beach? I saw some headlamps progressing slowly down towards where the noise was coming from and wondered if it was the Bill coming to sort them out, but headlamps went out and music got even louder. By this time very first glimmer of light in the sky, so I upped anchor and sailed off, leaving the first mate below to hide under the bedclothes.

Despite being very tired, it was a delight to be sailing as the dawn broke. Barely a breath of wind, just enough for steerage way as we were carried slowly down on the ebb (I had to put the engine on a couple of times for a few moments to avoid being swept by the tide into shoals or moorings). Beautiful colours in the sky. We were the only boat moving on the river, but there were thousands of birds (including some rather exotic sounding ones) making lovely sounds from the shore. Just before the sun was directly visible to me it was reflecting on the cranes at Felixstowe, making it look as thought they each had red neon lights on their frames.

Amazingly I could still hear the bass of the music behind me as we appraoched Parkstone Quay, and it was a strange relief when the noise of the machinery and work going on there that finally drowned out that racket.

I anchored again opposite Parkstone (not usually a choice spot!) and turned in to catch up on a bit of sleep. Later it was such a wrench to have turn the boat towards home, rather than carry on sailing on such a lovely day.

I could have throttled them at the time, but in a way I'm glad the noisy youth got me out of my bed in the middle of the night for such a special few hours sailing. As you say, full of happiness, and thankful (in a way that it has been easy to forget sometimes recently) to be boat owners.
 
We only managed Felixstowe to Waldringfield on Saturday and Felixstowe to Woodbridge on Sunday - both great fun, having missed three weeks due to tides/weather/other commitments - slow sail up the Deben, sat in the sun for a while and a cracking sail back:):)
 
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