July Long Weekend - Saturday

Dawn at Fambridge Yacht Station

It's a lovely start to the day and the skipper is, as usual, up bright and early ... well early anyway.

There's barely a breath of wind though and the tides are not ideal. We get away sharpish just before six to catch the last of the ebb downriver and anchor in the Brankfleet at quarter to eight to wait out the flood tide.

The outboard reverts to its tricks again coming in to anchor, cutting out as soon as its throttled back. The thought occurs to both of us that it seems to happen when the main tank is less than full so we top it up from the reserve jerry can.

I'm annoyed with myself as I've overlooked the fact that we didn't top off the tanks after our last trip so we now have a not quite brimming main tank and no reserve. Oh well, it's still enough for 9 or 10 hours motoring.

By gone Eleven I reckon the flood should have eased enough to make progress so it's on with the engine, up anchor and away back into the Crouch heading out to sea. An hour later, the engine is off and we're sailing making 2 knots over the ground in a half decent South Easterly breeze.

Although we're making progress, especially once the tide turns, it's slow going and as the breeze picks up and the ebb gets into it's stride the old wind over tide thing kicks in and the chop builds. We can't quite fetch our course close hauled on the Starboard tack and have to tack back across the channel once in a while losing precious ground every time. Jane is tired, I'm tired, it's not much fun and by 15:00 I've had enough and put about  to run back into the Crouch.

On a broad reach Brigantia simply flys along making, at times, nearly 4 knots over the ground despite the adverse tide. Working over to nearer the Foulness Sand I find the water is smoother than on the North side of the Whitaker. Everything else on the water is faster than us but not embarrassingly so since they're all also bigger and newer. We're not, I feel, looking like idiots who don't know what they're doing, even if we are!

By 19:00 we sail into the Brankfleet and anchor close in just upstream of the Branklet buoy under sail. Who needs an unreliable engine anyway!

After hoisting the ball and stowing the sails, we enjoy a delicious Fray Bentos Steak and Kidney pudding with tinned new potatoes and peas. Top nosh! Later once the tide has turned, I let out another 15m of anchor rode  - it's a high tide in the early hours and I don't want to drag the anchor and crash into the half a dozen yachts close upstream of us - and light the hurricane lamp and hoist it.

I wake briefly when the alarm goes off just before high water at 02:10, look out of the window and decide everything looks fine and go back to sleep. Might not be a proper anchor watch but what the hell, it's been a tiring time at work recently and I'm catching up on some much needed zzz's.