Stuck in Lowestoft

haven't posted for a while, so i'll quickly sum up the last few days and begin again in scarborough:
After leaving on Wednesday of last week, Mum and I sailed the boat up to Ipswich to meet Candi who had been staying at our Nana's, and Dad who had to work overnight in London. The journey was mainly good, winds were pretty high, but coming from behind, which made it alot more bearable than it would otherwise have been. The sun helped too, and Mum and I both got there with burnt noses. We ran the engine all the way there, which got rid of any of our fears about the engine overheating.
We stayed at Ipswich for a couple of days and then left at about midday on Saturday to Lowestoft. This time Candi and I sailed the boat while the parent's navigated from down below. We arrived in Lowestoft after a fairly uneventful journey with a Southerly wind, at about 8 o'clock. After mooring up, we had a swim in the marina since it's open to the sea. it wasn't as cold as you might expect but cold enough. We've been here since then, the weather has mainly been predicting force sixes, so we decided to wait before making possibly our longest single stint up to Scarborough.
Today, we hired a car and drove back to essex because we had some things to do, dad picked up his new phone case and when we got back, we were about to leave. last minute change of plans and even though we'd stowed everything away, ready to sail, the decision was made to leave in the early hours of the morning, to avoid sailing through the night if possible. Looks like we're going to have to anyway tomorrow night but hopefully we'll be in the routine of watches by then and it won't be so rough.