It is definitely off season! For good or for bad, few people are around and it is pretty cold. I looked at the weather earlier today, we had 9 degrees and London 16 degrees. Incredible, that is only 50 land miles away! We are anchored on the River Roach off the village of Paglesham.

Brendan was once again very brave and choose to join me in the dinghy to go ashore in the darkness and cold tonight. However, as it was low water springs, the so called all tide pontoon was not quite all tide in the water and it looked very muddy, We decided to give the picturesque place a miss and head back to the boat.

We realised this morning that we were quite short of diesel, so we decided to wait for higher water to be able to go into Bradwell Marina and fill up. I spoke to them on the radio and they said after 12 o’clock it should be possible to get in there with our draft. We passed the Bradwell nuclear power station that will years to dismantle and slowly crept along the shallow and winding channel.

It was a good sail this afternoon. We tacked out of the River Blackwater in about 10 knots of wind from SSE. Headed South after the Wallet Spitway towards river Crouch. The Roach is a tributary to it. The wind dropped and the tide was running harder against us so we took help of the engine eventually. It was very peaceful as we headed up towards Paglesham in the fading sunshine. We anchored as one of very few boats in 5.5 meters of water and immediately started to cook dinner.