Stowaways and an Eventful Trip
06 September 2011 | Blyth to Grimsby; 126nm travelled
Nichola / Dry, humid
3rd September
It was a very hurried and unplanned departure from Blyth. We’d originally planned to leave the next day (Sunday), but on casually checking the weather Saturday morning we saw that by leaving when planned there was a distinct possibility we’d run into strong winds forecast for Monday. The forecast was also looking bad for the whole week so we threw the option of going to Whitby out of the window too, as it’s a bit pricy and we would end up stuck there for many days.
We rushed around and were ready for off by 11:30am, with 125 nautical miles to go and an average speed of 5kts this would get us in for around the same time the next day…. just when the Grimsby lock gates would be due to close. Colin wasn’t keen on anchoring outside for the day and going through the locks when they opened at 8ish in the evening so we would need to keep our speed above average.
We departed to the sounds of French harmonica music blaring from the RNYC house boat as it was their French themed regatta today. Out into the open water, we got all sails up and engine off. We had a southerly F4 which meant we were close hauled on starboard tack, not great. With an added swell we were only able to do 3kts so frustratingly it was time to motor sail again. I can’t remember when we last had a good sail – somewhere on the west coast I think.
Light rain showers passed, the forecast warned of fog so a refresher session with the radar was called for. There were lots of big logs and sticks in the water! In the evening a racing pigeon landed on our guard rails and sat there for a while having a breather. It made a few attempts to fly off over the next few hours but looked exhausted and flapped frantically to get back aboard. It then had a little walk round the deck, right around the boat; up on the boom, onto the canopy and didn’t seem afraid of us, coming right up to me at one point. It looked like it was here for the night so I made a pigeon bed from a box, which it turned its nose up at but it did slurp up the water I gave it. It then had a preen and plumping up its feathers, settled on the back hatch, sheltered by the life raft from the wind. The main sheet traveler ran right behind it and it did look quite grumpy every time we trimmed the main!
Watches started at 10pm and it was now fully dark. It was quite a mild night with a damp, earthly smell being blown towards us from land. My regular watch checks now included making sure Pidgy was still OK hunkered down on the back hatch. The tide turned and our speed dropped below 5kts but we’d made good progress when the tide had been in our favour. We’d planned a 3 hour watch each followed by a 2 hour one so that I could get another rest before arriving at Grimsby. So, at 6am we were just swapping over when I heard the engine noise change – we were just moving to check it when it started to falter, so we quickly turned it off. Colin suspected we’d ran out of diesel – despite our usage calculations giving us enough to motor all the way to Grimsby if necessary. We quickly got the genny and staysail out to try to keep some momentum and so keep our timing for the Grimsby locks. I kept the sails trimmed making over 5kts and having quite a pleasant sail, whilst Colin was below decanting diesel from Rupert’s (the Reflex heater) separate fuel tank where we had about 30 litres. With all the kerfuffle Pidgy flew away and didn’t come back – bye bye Pidg! Colin got enough fuel for us to motor the rest of the way, keeping the revs low to give us just enough speed to get in on time. As it was we had nearly an hour to spare and we found that we’d actually had about 20 litres remaining in our main fuel tanks before adding in the amount from Rupert – the problem was that we were rolling about a bit causing the diesel to slosh about in the tanks and resulting in the fuel uptake pipe being occasionally out of fuel and sucking in air.
We’re now safely tucked up in Grimsby harbour to wait out the trail of lows due across the UK in the next few days. It’s certainly a good time for wind power!
Nx
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