Sean posing like the commodore in the Royal Norfolk and Suffolk Yacht Club

We left Scarborough at 12:00 midday as we had to wait for enough tide to get out of the small marina. With plenty of wind from the west and initially with 2 reefs in the main and a small amount of headsail we were making great speed. We ticked off another milestone when zooming past Flamborough head. We had about 3 knots of tide with us and sailed at 9 knots for the best part of two hours then at 6 knots for the rest of the day.
This passage would be an overnighter and about 140nm it would see us within 40 nm of our home port and the end of our adventure.

The weather forecast for the 24 hours was for winds easing and backing to the south or southeast. We kept the wind until about 01:00, when the wind dropped and with the speed down to about 3 knots it was time to put on the engine. We did this with trepidation as there were many lobster pot markers that cannot be seen at night just waiting to wrap around our propeller.

On overnight passages we try and have a hot meal at supper time and to her credit Pauline called me to say that there was shepherds pie ready. It was about 21:45h and I was just starting to get a bit cold, so I went down and devoured the meal before getting my head down for a couple of hours. How she does it, I dont know, as the boat was at 20 degrees of heel !

At about midnight, I came back on watch and the wind was dropping so we were sailing more slowly. Nights are starting to get longer at this time of year, with at least 10 hours of total darkness, so it was great to have an almost full moon and little cloud for the passage.

After about 45 minutes I decided that we needed to keep our speed up to make the tide around the north Norfolk headland, so I got the engine on and furled away our headsail as we would probably be motoring for the rest of the night.

At 03:00h Pauline came up (she always sets an alarm) and I went off watch again.


Paulines Watch

Night sailing on your own can be enjoyable if you don't have too much to do, and the sea area is not busy with ships and fishing boats etc. When you're happy with the boat and its surroundings you can settle down. Star gazing and looking at the moon through the binoculars is fascinating.

The North Sea, however is usually busy and you have to be vigilent. Having the chartplotter and AIS (automatic identification system) in the cockpit means you can see where you are at all times and identify what other vessels around you are doing, providing they have an AIS transponder.

After about half an hour, things got quite busy and I had to keep an close eye on two ferries approaching from opposite directions with us in the middle. I had just passed a large oil well to the north east and was trying to identify an east cardinal buoy which marks the east end of Sheringham Shoals that I wanted to leave well to starboard. The problem was that another east cardinal buoy with the same flash rate, plus a south cardinal, were on my port side a little distance away and neither of them were on the plotter or the chart. After plotting my position yet again and identifying the east cardinal buoy I wanted, I ignored the two that didn't matter. Perhaps they were only temporary and not yet updated on the chart.

I was keen to let Sean sleep for 3 hours, and would only disturb him if absolutely necessary. Once through this busy area, I settled down and relaxed. It was lovely to see the new day dawn and when Sean got up we both watched the sun rise and had a cup of tea before I crawled into bed for my second break. Zzzzzzzzzzzz