We rose about eight - a quick stop at the bakery and saying goodbye to the harbour master. The forecast said ESE 3 and for once it was bang on the money.

We had to delay our departure for a bit as we were stuck in the mud (LW). Since the eastern pier has been removed quite some silting has taken place - apparently the dredgers can't keep up. Never mind.

Motored out, cheery wave and that was it - see you in a couple of weeks.
Once outside the wind did disappoint - Guapa and light airs: not a match made in heaven. Pushing the tide, speed over the ground was a rather disappointing 2kts - 4kts with the engine running.

We were going to keep motorsailing till Westhinder, then we were going to have the kite up. No way was I going to put up with another 16 hours of motorsaling.

Westhinder came and went - time to get everything in place: boom, pull-up, pull-down, spinnaker sheets, jockey pole and last but not least, the kite in it's snuffer.

Everything rigged in record time, like riding a bike. At the 'moment supr�me' things got unstuck. Try as I might, the snuffer wouldn't go further up the halfway. Then it was spaghetti junction. Two times, three times, arrrgghh...
I was not going to be defeated by bits of string. Two of us on the foredeck we set about getting the kite out of the snuffer. I was going to hoist the thing, and that was that.
One hour later and it was up, in all it's glory. Sixty NM to go.

The feeling of satisfaction was immense. Boat speed picked up no end, over 6kts over the ground, pushing the tide and without the engine.
We all collapsed in a satisfied heap.



The TSS proved rather uneventful - although busier than two days ago. Apart from one, all merchantmen took the utmost care to steer well clear of us. Thanks - it helped a lot.

Then hours of nothing, just sitting back and relaxing. Decent speed, sails well set, what more could you want?



All in all it had been well worth the effort. Nothing gnaws at moral more than a painfully slow crossing.
When night fell we still had about 20NM ahead of us. What to do? Keep the kite up (no snuffer) or get it down and motor the rest of the way - slowly. A wise man would have recovered the kite, an idiot in a hurry would have left it up. No contest really - I left it up. We would address recovery when we got to it.

Our usual final approach is via Rough Towers and Cork Sands, not this time. With the kite up and in the dark I wanted to keep well clear of the big boys. Medusa and Landguard was far more sensible and safer, and the tide would carry us from Medusa onwards.
Reaching with the kite up and 16kts of apparent wind was pretty intense. Boat speed 8kts and rising.

I knew the textbook way of recovering a kite, but I wanted to try something new. My attempt at re-inventing the wheel. I would steer the boat just off the wind and the spinnaker should collapse on the foredeck where Brigitte and Evita could recover it.

All I can say folks, is: don't try this at home. As a plan it did not survive first contact with reality. At the helm, I found myself buried under quite a bit of spinnaker. I just managed to extract myself in time to notice Brigitte shouting 'Landguard dead ahead'. Disaster averted just in time - when we passed the buoy we could have stepped on it, we were that close. Hours of boredom and moments of sheer panic.

Navigating the Port of Felixtowe at night is always a bit of a challenge. The container terminal is lit up like a X-Mas tree. The navigation buoys are lost in the background. The new plotter proved it's worth.

Next stop: our mooring buoy. As was to be expected - a squatter had taken up residence. Our pick-up buoy seems to attract them like moths to a candle. I gave the 'offender' the searchlight treatment (12 million candelas - thank you Halfords). It did not take long for a rather sleepy head to appear. Credit to them; they were very civil about it and moved along in a matter of minutes. It's a risk you run. Picked up our buoy and all secured in no time. I would clean up on deck in the morning in daylight.
Quick cup of soup and off to bed, it had been a long day.

Whatever else we could have done this bank holiday weekend, it would have been boring compared to this. Before I nodded off I counted my blessings - what were the chances of ending up with a family like this one? Kite flying in the dark - having a family/crew like that's better than winning the lottery.