Today was to be a fairly long 63 mile trip up to Scarborough ( 54:17.1N, 000:23.5W). The problem was that it was not so much a dawn, as a slight lightening of the greyness, with added rain and a stiff breeze. The Met Office inshore forecast was grim, with fog and mist ( we do not set off into that ), and the Coastguard had no better update for us. However, some other forecasts were a little more optimistic, and the Met Office’s own land forecasts for the coastal towns we would passing did not mention fog.

 So we decided to go, and established that we could return into Grimsby up to just before noon and still get through the lock, if we found conditions too grim. One of the problems with this trip is that there are not really any ports we could duck into en route , so once started we would get to a point of ‘no return’. Our strategy in this case, if bad fog did descend, would be to sail right inshore and hug the coast to Scarborough, were the big ships could not go...all we would have to watch for would be small fishing boats and lobster pots.

We slipped lines at 0740, and as normal, were about to leave the dock just as a big tug decided to come in. Waited for that, and then we were off.  Visibility was not too bad...just ‘Grimsby grey’. The tide planning was to take the ebb down the river, and this tide would then curve north as we passed Spurn Head , and sweep us up the coast for almost 6 hours. We aimed to make Flamborough Head just at the end of this tide, and before the south flowing ‘bad’ tide started, which could whip up some chop off the Head with wind against tide.

We shot down the river, and had half an hour of quite rough water as we left the Humber , and then were in much smoother seas as we tracked the coast north. We even had some sunshine , and the fogs never came...just mist patches, but never thick enough to be a problem. We did take the opportunity to put the radar on and practice tracking ships , so were ready if the fog did suddenly appear.

Our tide planning did not quite work, and we were an hour late reaching Flamborough Head, meaning that we had a bad tide, and gave the Head a good two miles clearance to keep out of some quite rough water. We saw a huge number of seabirds here, including a lot of Puffins, who always seemed to be tagging along with groups of Razorbills ; presumably they had outsourced fish finding to the Razorbill clan, or perhaps Puffins have a secret longing to be Razorbills?