It was always going to be a bit of a rush.... our friends on Freewheel had organised Pirate weekend for the first weekend of our holiday and ideally we would have a few days on board in Burnham to get sorted out and catch up with friends before heading out. This plan meant we travelled down on the Thursday evening after picking Patrick up from work en route. We had a Tesco delivery booked for Friday afternoon and then we intended sailing up to Shotley Friday evening, then getting organised in the morning before heading down to "Pirate Island" Saturday lunchtime.
It's always with a bit of trepidation we get on the boat after a month or so away and this time the surprise was in the toilet in the form of some strange green mould... no idea why this happened... it's never happened before! Luckily it didn't smell and was easily got rid of:-)
Despite the busy evening I took time to enjoy a glass of Tamnavulin in the cockpit before hitting the sack.
In reality the weather was looking decidedly dodgy for Friday so we were already on plan B which was to get up early Saturday morning and head straight to Stone Point. Friday was spent stowing gear (for a month) and doing multiple runs to the local fuel station to fill fuel cans with white diesel to fill up the boat tank. UK marinas usually only sell red diesel but we still have white diesel in our tanks from our time travelling and prefer to keep it this way as we are unsure if Belgium may fine red diesel boats post Brexit. Usually we fill up with white at Ramsgate on the way to Oostende on our summer cruise but as we are staying in the UK this year we decided to keep our options open.
Tesco arrived in the afternoon to deliver part 1 of our supplies so it was all hands on deck to get the shopping to the boat and stowed.... I just LOVE fridge Tetris (NOT).
I'd noticed from their Facebook posts that our good friends Bru and Jane were in Fambridge working on their boat so we invited them for an evening curry just like old times before our trip to the Med. It was lovely to catch up and we all enjoyed the curry and a beer or two before a reasonably early night ready for our early start in the morning.
