19/08/21 to 20/08/21 West Mersea and Tollesbury

 Thursday

A short motor over to West Mersea and then a nail-biting (for Patrick... I was strangely chilled out) wait whilst the tide dropped to see if we'd picked a mooring where we would go aground. It was very close... in fact the rudder just touched the bottom when a passing motor boat created a little too much wash. Patrick was so concerned he transferred to the dinghy and was dipping our jousting pole (boat hook) to check the depth and if the bottom was soft mud (good) or stone (bad) at the back of the boat as our depth sounder (like most) is at the front of the keel.

Eventually we felt safe enough and so headed ashore to meet up with Chris and Anne, this time for a meal at the Coast Inn rather than our usual Pizza in their garden. The meal was lovely but unfortunately I forgot to take photos of our time ashore. It was a long dinghy ride back against the tide in the dark, particularly as the outboard has been a little temperamental so Patrick took a rather meandering course to ensure if it packed in there was always a moored boat to grab on to not far away.

Friday

Up in reasonable time... Esmé tried to convince me to rig up my exercise stuff on deck... demonstrating her own stretches in encouragement but I wasn't feeling the love for it (sorry Tracey!). 

Finally it was time to head into Tollesbury, a little nerve wracking as we can only get in at the top of the tide and we've only been in a couple of times before.... a long time ago!

Patrick, ever hopeful of my sewing abilities dropped the headsail thinking that my speedy stitcher might manage to punch through the many layers of sail cloth and webbing on the tack of the sail. Unfortunately it was a no-go so we'll need to find a sailmaker to repair it when we return to Burnham. In the meantime we'll sail with a couple of rolls in the headsail to protect it from further damage.

After a while the kids were yelling that we were aground. Patrick and I were quite chilled out as Tollesbury is soft mud and Laurin sits quite nicely in mud. But the kids were quite animated shouting.... "but the DINGHY is aground". We had to admit this was rather extreme but Laurin was absolutely fine in the nice soft mud bath.

We caught up with the harbourmaster, bought some ice creams and soon enough it was time for our 3pm swim slot. Tollesbury has a small swimming pool covered by a polytunnel which the kids remembered from their last visit which must have been about 7 years ago. Because of Covid we needed to book slots which I had done when booking our berth, so we had the pool all to ourselves which was cool, but didn't allow the kids the chance to meet other kids to play with so we then planned to spend the evening at the tide pool.

I'd bought a small piece of gammon in a foil tray and was keen to try this on the Cobb BBQ. I also wanted to experiment with making scones on the Cobb too. AJ was a little reluctant at first but eventually agreed to join us for the evening. We took the paddle board over and eventually enjoyed a pleasant evening, however it was somewhat longer than planned as Patrick and I had a miscommunication about which attachments to use on the Cobb resulting in a very long cooking time, and some slightly flat scones!

Eventually we abandoned the tide pool as mosquitos were starting to bite and retreated to the boat, digging out the old mosquito nets from the Med.

Saturday

Sadly no swimming today as the pool polytunnel was being repaired so we went to explore the Saltings at high tide on dinghy and paddleboard.

Later that day Patrick and I took a walk at low water and saw the Saltings in a different light. It was nice to take a little time to ourselves and the peace was very much welcome.

Sunday

The kids were happy that the swimming pool was back in action, after which we had a lazy afternoon before Patrick and I walked in the opposite direction whilst the kids played in the tree by the tide pool.

On our return to the tide pool we saw a couple of teenage wannabe engineers wheeling their "invention" down to the water for a "test sail". They had strapped a cordless drill to a kayak with a prop shaft in its chuck leading to a very small propeller. We decided to wait and watch. They were very methodical and removed the drill for the launch, checking that the "boat" didn't sink with one person in it. They then tried the drill but the propeller was pretty much out of the water. Here the girlfriend/second engineer was coaxed into the craft to try to get the propeller in the water.... a slight improvement but paddles were still very much needed!