I woke up to wet ground and fog, the bright sunshine of the day before being long gone. It didn’t inspire all that much but I’d suggested we do something to Mike and he was free so I took the girls to school and went over to the cliff to take a look. The sea was flat. A light northerly wind was felt and it looked like an easy fish but I wasn’t convinced I wanted to sit at anchor in case the mist got worse and I’d also need a bit of time to get my gear together as my van no longer exists. I called Mike and asked if he fancied trying his sail out at long last being as it’d be an easy entry into the world of Pacific Action! We arranged to meet…
…postponed on my return when I was reminded that someone was coming over for a meeting and I ought to be there. Poor Mike, he pitched up at the later time and I was a headless chicken as it’d overrun. No matter, we loaded my yak and gear onto his van and headed for Gorleston.
There were a bunch of anglers spread along the beach as we trolleyed down, keeping tight to the groyne so as to not disturb them as we paddled out past the Swan, the disturbance of the water marking it clearly. The tide was flooding but the wind seemed to have dropped. Up went the sails. Sort of.
Modifications. First time with Mikes sail, it wasn’t being pulled taut so the front bungee was tightened and retied. Far better but…the spread wasn’t there, the right pole bending over at the joint. There was nothing we could do for a proper fix but some fiddling with straps and a cut piece of bungee kind of made a fix for a downwind sail gave a sufficient amount of use. It’s just that the wind was missing now.
They say you should never whistle at sea, it whistles up the wind. I tried some Beethoven but things didn’t improve bar the odd gust so we kind of sailed along at the same speed as the tide, running at the same speed as the wind. Hardly the gentle learning curve, more a benign curve-ball. Ah well…
Down we went past Corton, passing a couple of boats; word over the radio from the boats on the South Corton was one or two small whiting, no cod, not much happening. The tide was minimal, the complete opposite to last week’s screaming bitch we’d tried to fish in! It was a perfect day to be anchored to be fair but hearing how poor the fishing was my guilt at forcing Mike to sail on a still day was assuaged slightly.
We passed Tramps, came down past Dogger and picked up some slightly bumpier water off Ness Point and the harbour mouth, radioing in for permission to cross the approaches, turning in to the beach and finally finding a bit of wind! Bloody typical! Perhaps we should have dumped a car at Southwold and run that way. Too late now, we ran in for a smooth landing, grabbed a coffee and headed back to pick up Mike’s van. We may not have had the Fastnet experience but the sun had broken through and it’d been a pleasant enough chilled out trip to escape the ghost of Christmas coming.
No comments:
Post a Comment