Today we were going to pay for the perfect tide planning of yesterday. The basic problem was that we had to leave at 4 am to get the best tidal lift up to Lowestoft, and we quickly decided that was far too early. Thus we had to accept that much of the trip would be against the tide, and we chose our departure time such that at least the last few hours should be with the tide, so that things would speed up towards the end. At least we had good weather for our departure from Shotley, and for a good part of the trip, although again we had light winds and had to motor sail in order to make progress.

 

The first half of the trip was indeed very slow, plodding up the coast at around 3.5 / 4.5 kts over the ground as we punched the bad tide. Unfortunately , this is not the most  exciting coastline, and we were easily able to extract more or less everything of interest from it as we crawled past. We kept a couple of miles off Orfordness, which was a good idea, since even in these light conditions the tidal streams were fast and were disturbing the water ; I would not like to be anywhere near here in rough weather. It was noticeable that the water colour changed abruptly several times , from normal 'sea' to brown soup caused by sand in the water. It was quite odd, because the sandy water was often deeper than the clear....something odd was clearly going on with the tidal stream around Orfordness.

 

We then discovered that we were passing an area marked on the chart as 'sandwaves', which are basically big ridges in the sand caused by currents in certain conditions, and somewhat strangely particularly in calm weather. This was clearly all related....more research required !

 

For the whole trip we could see the white dome of the Sizewell reactor, gradually getting bigger as we passed the rather bleak coast around Orfordness, and then the pretty town of Aldeburgh. Unfortunately there was no way we could call in there to sample its famous fish and chips on the beach. As we got abeam of Sizewell the tide finally turned, and we were soon making up lost ground, scooting along at over 8 kts over the ground, and we were soon approaching Lowestoft at around 6pm.

 

This time of day turned out to be important. Having seen almost no shipping at all on the whole trio, we were suddenly surrounded by fast windfarm catamarans all bringing the construction and service teams back at the end of the day, and they were all going into Lowestoft at the same time. We had obviously hit rush hour, and the only good thing was that at least they were going the same way as us. We slotted behind a couple and made our way in to the rather narrow harbour entrance, ferry gliding in across a very strong tide and the wake from the work boats. Once inside the harbour area we then milled about trying to keep out of the way as the workboats dashed hither and thither, waiting for the 7pm road bridge opening so that we could proceed up river to the marina. It was quite a relief to get upstream and away from all this activity, as we passed more docks now dedicated to a mixture of offshore support and ship breaking; not the prettiest sight , but at least it showed that there was lots of work going on.

 

The marina was well organised and surprisingly pleasant, given its surroundings, and we were soon tied up safely. Moondog would be spending a few days here whilst I went home, so it was good to get into a sheltered spot. 

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