The financials around selling our private berth meant that Laurin hadn’t been sailed this year and had been out of the water for a couple of months so needed quite a lot of prep to be ready for our summer cruise. A plan for me to come down early with some friends to get her ready and then have a mini cruise soon morphed into a plan for AJ and I to come down first, our friends to join us a couple of days later and stay for the trip over to the Netherlands. Patrick and E would arrive with the boat already prepped and ready to go as soon as they got here.
As we weren’t going to be coming back to Burnham, our friends Steve and Dee offered to bring all our kit down in their van so that we could get the train. AJ and I travelled down after he finished school, delays right at the beginning of our journey from Leeds meaning a changed route, and us not getting in to Burnham until about 11pm, missing our optimistically planned ASDA food delivery. It was a long, hot and tiring journey but at least the delay meant that 100% of the cost of our trip was refunded!
During the next couple of days AJ and I worked hard putting the boat back together and giving her a good clean as well as re-arranging a food delivery! We got the mizzen and Genoa on, put the log in, checked safety equipment, fixed connectors for the solar panel and Saturday morning we finally tried the engine. All was good until I ran it for a while at higher revs in order to get some kind of confidence that we wouldn’t have the same over heading problem as last year (paranoia as we’d cleaned the heat exchanger out last year and hadn’t done much motoring at all since then). To my dismay the oil pressure alarm came on and the oil pressure gauge was reading zero! Much discussion with various parties including our good friend Paul and the conclusion was that if it wasn’t a wiring problem then it was most likely the oil pressure sender needed replacing. I checked the wiring as best I could and then Paul suggested going out for a curry to cheer us up. Paul and Paula have been good friends for a lot of years. Paul especially has been around Burnham the entire 25 years that we have been sailing out of the marina and has not only seen our kids grow up but also me grow from a newbie sailor to a Yachtmaster (still with nowhere near enough confidence) to the sailor I am now (although he still thinks I’m a wuss when it comes to sailing). We’ll miss his presence and advice although hopefully we’ll catch up in the Netherlands sometime. We tried to keep our goodbyes low key, but the friends we’ve made in Burnham will be greatly missed.
Sunday Steve and Dee arrived and over the next couple of days we filled up with gas, diesel and more food. We got rid of out of date flares, put the main on, enjoyed amazing food cooked by our friends and ordered and fitted the new oil pressure sender. Wednesday morning we went for a test run and invited AJ’s old friend George along for the ride.
We had a lovely motor up the Roach and even saw some seals. AJ then had some time ashore with George before Patrick and Esmé arrived ready for a quick departure after a very brief (alcohol gift laden) goodbye to the staff at Burnham Yacht Harbour.
We’d hoped to be leaving for an overnight passage to Oostende but I was a little cautious about the sea-state towards the end of the trip, along with building wind speeds throughout Thursday which would be uncomfortable if we didn’t make good progress overnight. Add into the mix that it would be Steve and Dee’s first North Sea crossing and Dee’s not a very experienced sailor regardless, it seemed prudent to delay the crossing. However whilst mulling over our options I noticed that Brightlingsea would knock an hour or so off our passage time and may potentially be less impacted by setting off a couple of hours before high water. As it was springs, if we set off pretty much immediately after Patrick and E got here we should just about make it across Ray Sands to get there for a change of scene.
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