Arrived on board Saturday afternoon having had a very early start, breakfast at the Beefeater at Cambridge, and then a very lovely catch up with friends Lisa and Marc in Bishops Stortford to borrow their electric outboard to try out. Tesco delivery late afternoon and then time spent getting Laurin ship shape. Early hours of Sunday departure was no - go due to bad weather but we were hopeful for Monday.
Sunday we had a nice surprise as our old friends Bru and Jane brought their boat up to Burnham from Fambridge so we had a nice catch up and also got a chance to go on board and look round a Royal Navy training vessel that was spending the night in Burnham.
Early Monday start - all going well until Patrick noticed the engine was running hotter than normal and we had a little more white smoke than I remembered. Luckily we'd chosen to have a temperature gauge rather than just an alarm when we re-engined Laurin and Patrick is great at monitoring it after occasionally volunteering as assistant engineer on Tall Ships. We considered carrying on but decided (as always) that we'd rather be cautious. Back in Burnham we checked the impeller, water inlet and thermostat before accepting that we would have to pull the heat exchanger out to see if that was causing the problems. Embarrassingly a call to a vert friendly Beta Marine Customer Support enlightened us that cleaning the heat exchanger should be done in the annual service. How we missed this I do not know. Anyway, we rose to the challenge, with help and advice from Matt in the Boatyard and by the end of the day we'd got things back together, although we were kicking ourselves though as we had missed by far the best weather window for crossing to Oostende.
Tuesday morning we left to head for Ramsgate, possibly hoping for Dunkirk but knowing it was unlikely due to stronger winds forecast in the channel for later. We also couldn't see much of a weather window for later in the week but we really wanted to get moving. Everything was going really well both engine wise and timing, and we were seriously considering pushing on to Dunkirk, had changed our heading but also were waiting for the next weather update to be sure. Almost simultaneously the shipping forecast gave a strong wind warning and the wind picked up and was right on the nose. We diverted to Ramsgate and had a lively last hour into port.
Moored up, hit the arcades and decided on eating out at the Thai Cafe we'd visited in a previous, younger, racier life.
Thursday was too windy for anything yet we were surprised by a rather sporty boat backing in to the berth next to us to pick up a young man in a wheelchair for a spin round the harbour. I don't know the full story but he was carrying a bunch of flowers and the care and "can do" attitude of the crew was amazing to watch. By now I was being driven insane by the snatching of the mooring lines despite us having bungee shock absorbers to reduce this. We had a potential weather window to get to Dunkirk but only by setting off at midnight if we wanted the tides right. It really didn't look like the wind would drop enough and we were struggling to get enough sleep, but we set an alarm for 11pm and got up for a look. Maybe we're too cautious but it was still blowing nearly 30 knots in the channel and we were sleep deprived so we decided not to go. It was an even bigger blow as there was no real sight of another weather window and there was no space in the inner harbour to escape the snatching. Set alarms for 6am and headed back to Burnham.
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| Hard to see but the wheelchair is strapped down at the back. Notice the amount of heal under bare poles in the harbour! |
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