Life is full of surprises

 After our lovely evening on Holy Island we went to bed fairly early and very happy, anchored in the bay.  At 1.30 am Alan got up to check all was well and everything was fine, then at 3.00 am Roger felt a different movement on the boat - it had shifted a bit.  He went down to put a jacket on and by the time he got back it had moved a lot.  He went back down to wake up Alan and by then it really was perilously close to St Cuthbert’s Island. I had slept through all this but was now definitely awake and Roger asked me to come up quickly and stand by the tiller - and so I did, in nothing but my pyjamas, with the wind blowing, channeling my inner Grace Darling. The anchor had dragged. Our 7.5 metre chain was hopelessly inadequate.  Rather than spend time trying to anchor once more, we stooged around until 4.30 am when it was light enough to leave without running over the lobster pots.  

Once we got over the shock of the early start, we had a rather lovely journey along the Northumberland coast seeing in the dawn. We arrived at Amble marina at 9.00 am and had a lazy morning. One other thing we discovered during the night was that our navigation lights weren’t working.  We had someone look at them at Amble but he thought the problem was at the top of the mast and he wasn’t at all keen on going up there.  We’re hoping to solve the problem at Hartlepool.  However we did have a real stroke of luck at the Amble boatyard (now closed and selling the last few bits they have) and bought some old, but serviceable anchor chain.  Alan and Roger have attached it to the anchor and old chain and we are now the proud owners of 33 m of anchor chain!

We left Amble this morning and are now at Blyth for our party port gathering. It is really lovely to meet old friends in the North East Gaffers.  We are heading off soon to a reception at the Royal Northumberland Yacht Club (an old light ship - really interesting) and then to a barbecue at the Blyth Tall Ship. 

Photos of Bamburgh castle from the sea very early in the morning and our Northumberland flag flying proudly as we approached Blyth:




Holy Island to Amble         23.4 nms

Amble to Blyth        17.2 nms


Comments

  1. RickJuly 27, 2023 at 9:55 PM

    Holy Island brings back delightful memories-we got an early start leaving HI on our bikes also.

    ReplyDelete

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