Yacht Seaduction 2023

25 July

Ostend to Ipswich

Carole slept like a log and woke just before the alarm went off at 5.15 am. The kettle went on for our first cuppa, while we had a quick wash and got dressed. While Chris nipped to use the facilities, Carole made the beds and got organised below decks. Chris then brought the electricity in and with the sky just beginning to lighten, we slipped our lines without problem. Carole then put the fenders away as Chris motored out of the harbour at 6.15. To be on the safe side, we switched on our navigation lights for half an hour as the sun was taking its time to rise. We passed quite a few fishing boats with their nets out, so gave them a wide berth so as not to interfere with their work. There was less than a knot of wind, so no point in getting the sails out yet. A rather chunky workboat accelerated across our bow probably heading out to one of the wind farms. It caused us a few moments of bouncing up and down, but not much else was going on for us to be concerned with. The sea state was forecast as smooth to slight and it was certainly very calm, so Carole took advantage of this and did a few cleaning jobs below decks as we went along. She also rinsed out a cotton shirt for Chris for later/tomorrow as there were now only clean dark polo shirts left. This was hung up at the bow and looked like a baby spinnaker as it caught in the breeze.

Chris was monitoring the movements of the big ships around us, as we were now passing through the big ships anchorage at West Hinder. We passed quite close to an LPG ship called Thetagas which had come from Willemstad and Chris took a photo as we don’t often get that close. At 9.30, the sea state was still quite calm and smooth; temperature 26 degrees and with the sun now quite bright, it was time to put on the sun protection cream. We put the mainsail up, but because the wind was still quite light, the engine remained on. We had now done 19 miles – with approx 65 miles to go. We were well out of Belgian territorial waters, so Carole went forward and took the courtesy flag down. Chris was following the progress of a Dutch sailing boat which had been behind us, but there were no other sailing boats in our line of sight.

We were approaching the main TSS (Traffic Separation Scheme) between Belgium and the UK. Our AIS System did not pick up any large traffic going North East that would give us a problem so we continued crossing as planned. We could see that the traffic going South West was very busy with fifteen large vessels, three of which needed close monitoring. We changed course to pass to the stern of two of them then again for the third. Chris was pleased when we had passed the TSS. We were still 35 miles from landfall. The wind had increased a bit more and the engine was now off. Our next waypoint was the Sunk TSS and we changed the radio to CH14 to monitor the Sunk VTS for ship movements in the area as this is a large sea roundabout about 10 miles wide. Luckily there were only three ships passing through which gave us no problem. The wind was about 10 knots as we saw the first crane at Felixstowe in the distance. As the weather was hot we knew that the wind would increase as we got nearer land so we decided to put reefs in both sails ready for the increase. As we approached the Cork Sands the wind had increased to 22 knots and the sea state had also changed with 2 metre waves. Now we were moving with the sea breaking over the bow. Yes, it was the expected “Harwich blow” which lasted until we were through into the River Orwell when everything started to calm down again. We sailed past Levington Marina, then Pin Mill and Woolverstone Marina before getting the sails in and as we went under the Orwell Bridge, Chris radioed in to the Lock and Carole got the boat ready for the last lock of the trip at Ipswich. Monitoring Channel 68, we heard that a large commercial ship, Jerome H, was preparing to slip her lines and do a U-turn just before the lock, so Chris called up her lady skipper and asked if she wanted us to hold off while the boat was turned round. Her skipper said for us to continue at our speed and we should make it past before Jerome H’s U-turn. Chris thanked her and we continued past, giving her a wave of thanks. We locked through and onto our berth like we knew what we were doing and while Carole double-tied fenders and generally tidied round, Chris went off to buy our fish and chip supper, which we enjoyed on deck in the warm evening sunshine with a cold beer for Chris and a gin and tonic for Carole. A most satisfactory end to our trip. Here’s to the next one!