July Long Weekend - Sunday

It's a late start, by my standards and it's 08:00 before I get the kettle on, roll breakfast and stagger on deck to bring in the anchor light and shorten the anchor rode to a more sensible 15m now that the tide is well on its way out.

The forecast is promising and I'm not waiting for a fair tide this morning. However, the fuel situation is a nagging worry in the back of my mind. We'd like to head up to the Walton Backwaters, somewhere I've always wanted to go, but we've got to be back at Fambridge tomorrow night or very early on Tuesday without fail and I'm not convinced we have enough petrol to motor all the way back if the wind fails or is dead in our teeth.

So we decide to pop up to Essex Marina where the sign says petrol is available and top up the tank and spare can before heading out. No point messing about with the sails, so it's on with the engine, up anchor and underway at 08:40.

Approaching the marina we met the Marie Louisa outbound downriver. I can't find any information on her but since she's still carrying all the relevant wording on her sides and cabin I assume she's still the Sheerness range safety vessel even though she seemed to have a charter party on board!

Baltic Wharf was devoid of shipping when we came downriver yesterday, I'd seen one ship head upriver whilst we were sorting out after anchoring in the Bankfleet last night but when the other had snuck in I've no idea!

Given the trouble yesterday morning with the engine, I throttled back in mid-river to see what she was going to to today. Sure enough, she started to hunt and die.

After several restarts and further attempts to get her to run at low revs as we drifted gently up the middle of the river, we had a crew conference and decided to head back up to home base to try and sort things out. The embarrassment potential of an engine that can't be relied upon for maneouvering is too high.#

On the next restart, it was full speed ahead upriver.

Jane took the helm for a while under power and with the spray hood down so she can actually see ahead she did fine. At one point, on nearly full throttle, we were making 7.1kts over the ground albeit with a fair bit of tidal assistance!

Approaching the moorings, I once again throttled down early and sure enough the engine died. There was a gentle South Westerly breeze so I quickly unfurled about half the genoa and ghosted up towards the pontoon aiming to sneak onto the inside under sail. I reckon it would have been do-able but the wind died at just the wrong moment leaving us out of control and heading for the boat tied to the end of the pontoon.

Luckily, the tide was not running strongly and I had just enough steerage way to aim the bow at the end of the pontoon. As we bounced off it, doing no damage fortunately, Jane stepped off and got the bow line round a cleat.

I quickly got some fenders out on our Port side as the tide carried us around the end of the pontoon to lie against Ian the ferryman's boat. Phew, calamity averted by some quick thinking, fast work by Jane and a big slice of luck.

The boat ahead was just about to depart so when they headed off we walked Brigantia forward and secured alongside at 11:35, pleased to get back without anything serious to worry about.

After a bit of a breather, it was off with the engine cover and check the plugs. No problems there, that's got to be the best looking set of plugs I've ever pulled from a 2-stroke engine. She's definitely not fouling. We popped down to Burnham by car to check out Marinestore at BYH. Bought Jane a hat for her birthday and bought Brigantia a flag staff and 3/4 yard sewn ensign. I got nuffin! Next port of call was Asda in South Woodham to fill up the fuel cans - just squeezed 20 litres into the tank and jerry can meaning we had about 12 or 13 litres left after this mornings run upriver.

Back on board, I decided that it would be anti-social working on the engine when so many people were enjoying the Sunday afternoon sunshine so I pottered around doing odd jobs here and there whilst Jane tidied up below decks (a job that seemed, for reasons I don't understand, to involve a lot of sitting down with a magazine in hand). Later, we headed for the showers before a meal and a drink in the Ferry Boat to celebrate Janes birthday. For the next six weeks I'm officially her toy-boy until I catch up again!

Neither of us was in the mood for a late night so it was still just about light when we walked back to the boat and hit the sleeping bags for an early night.