First day

We left to make our way to Ipswich yesterday, with gale force 5-6 winds. We wanted to get to the end of the river Medway before deciding whether the sea was too rough for us to spend an 8-10 hour journey in it. When we got there, there was an imminent gale force 8 warning from the Met office and we decided to go across the Thames and anchor up for the night, where we could buy some new batteries for the boat and also look at a niggling problem with the engine's cooling system. As we reached the end of Southend pier, the niggling problem became more serious and we were forced to drop anchor further out than we'd wanted. My dad took the engine to bits for a while, looking for something that might cause it and we found that strainer on the sea water intake was full of barnacles and sand. Once we cleaned it and restarted the engine, it seemed happy enough to run without the temperature going above 90°C where it had got up to 110°C before.

After we anchored in the place we'd originally planned, I dropped Dad off with the dinghy so he could get the batteries and pick up my Mum, with the plan of picking them up on the dinghy again in an hour or two. However, after 10 minutes of being on the boat, Dad phoned me to tell me to take the boat back to Chatham on my own!

I sailed back over the Thames with the genoa and put it away at the mouth of the Medway since I didn't think I'd be able to tack up the river on my own. This turned out to be easier said than done with some heavy gusts of wind causing a real mess of the cabin below, but eventually I was motoring back to Chatham. Had some trouble with two sailing boats, who felt they'd take the 'give way to sail' ruleto its limit and forcing me right to the edge of the river before tacking back out of my way.

When I reached the lock at Chatham, Dad and Peter from Ladylove took my ropes and I was safely home. The second boat into the lock behind me was one of the sailing boats who'd forced me to the side of the river. turned out while I managed to get the boat in on my own, he and a crew of 3 or 4 couldn't and they made a right mess of things, which cheered me up a bit.

Turned out our first day ending up being more of a sea trial, but the engine problem was fixed and we now have two new domestic batteries. We'll now set off properly next Wednesday.