So on the back of our first weekend, the weather held on and we decided that another jaunt down river would be the perfect way to recover from a hard week of work. Maria was working from home on the Friday and was able to get the boat prepped and I finished early so that I could get home and we could get on our way in time to spend a couple of nights on anchor before returning in perfect wind conditions early on Sunday. In fact for mos of the weekend, the wind is blowing up to 20knots from the South. Not a concern for us at anchor or when we are sailing, we have done both in much worse than that.
The anchoring would require the hand signal approach we had developed previously since, although I had acquired the replacement remote for the windlass, I would not risk fitting it while the anchor was down in case I did something to stop the other control or windlass from working. That would be bad so I will fit it when we have a little time in harbour. That way if I mess it up, I can get it sorted without having to come up with a way of raising the anchor by hand (or winch)
Our plan worked well to start off. Maria had done well to get the boat ready, got bait from the fishing tackle shop and collected me from the station to save us another ten minutes. Engine started and Maria is calling into the lock to request a lock out. We’re in luck, we are catching the end of freeflow which means the water is at the same level as the river and we can go straight through the lock, as long as the light is green.
Heading down river is fine although we are taking it in turns to do some work, whether taking calls, processing emails or working on our laptops. It’s very quiet down the river as everyone else is starting to eat out of work. The wind is a little close on the nose so we decide to motor down so that we can be sure to arrive at our chosen anchoring spot in good time. This will give us the opportunity to relax and enjoy the last of the evening before the sun goes down.
As we approach Felixstowe, the wind blows up a little more and is a bit more than forecast. We discuss our plans and consider an alternative of spending the night on halfpenny pier in Harwich. This is well protected from a southerly wind. As we round the corner of Felixstowe we approach the confluence of the Orwell and the Stour. There are only two boats on the outer part of the pier which normally means that there is space. However the motorboat in particular looks something like 60 feet and it is right in the middle of the western half of the pier. We call into the excellent harbourmaster on their mobile phone. It is clear as we get close that even moving the two boats around won’t give a great amount of space for Mariadz who can take up 60 feet herself. The harbourmaster suggests we could raft up to the motorboat but at twenty tonnes we are concerned that it will not be a comfortable night for any of us. Also we imagine that they would get quite upset at someone rafting up. We revert to plan A and head down the river Stour to one of our chosen anchorages. In the Stour we have a few options, we can anchor near the top of the river opposite Harwich Parkeston Quay, we can return to the Holbrook Bay area and anchor where we were the previous weekend or slightly further up where we traditionally anchor near the cardinal buoy. We decide to anchor near where we were last weekend where the water is a little deeper. With our new system and Maria controlling the anchor, we are anchored in no time with anchor float showing where we are, snubbers protecting the windlass from damage and the anchor ball flying.
At the time it is wind against tide and when the wind is in the opposite direction to the flow of the water, the chop is a little worse. We are hardly moving but the water is not smooth. We know we are comfortably anchored for the night and settle down for a healthy dinner of steak and cooked vegetables, and by cooked vegetables I don’t mean potatoes cut into long fingers and deep fried!
In the summer and especially at anchor, we often stay in the cockpit watching the world go by, chatting and listening to music. 
The cats are settled and like being close as they sleep. We are all really relaxed. With the built in stereo system still temporarily unavailable, see later blog, we are using the amazon echo to play the music. This has the added advantage of being voice controlled :). It’s a lovely evening and we may have enjoyed a couple of drinks and maybe even a little dance after it got dark but thankfully it is not too late a night since we are both shattered from the working week. Just before dark, one of the scout training yachts decides to anchor near to us, actually in our traditional spot near to the cardinal buoy. 
They have a reputation of bouncing off people but we haven’t personally experienced it and the skippers seem very nice when you meet them. Apparently, on this occasion they were concerned that they may have disturbed our tranquility in the evening. They clearly don’t know Mariadz at all 🙂
The next morning there is some trepidation as we approach the scales but we decide to weigh in and survey the damage since we are both meant to be dieting! We are both pleasantly surprised to see our weight has gone down a lot over the last few days. At least now we know what we need to do…. 🙂
It is not too late when’s we get up, and it is a beautiful day with quite a bit of wind. In short perfect sailing conditions. So Mariadz in the spirit of rebellion settles down for a chill day. Maria decides that today is the day she is going to catch our dinner. 
Now I don’t think this sounds too difficult, surely you go to the freezer, pick out the packet, put it on the side – dinner caught! But apparently, Maria has different ideas. She has gone to the freezer as I thought but she gets out the squid and puts it next to the worms, she is fishing for supper! Now with our standard amount of success in this area, it is certain that we are going to starve but it is ok since we have food available on the “off chance” Maria is unsuccessful.
It takes Maria some time to set up the two rods but she is pottering around having a great time and looking relaxed without a care in the world so I am not going to complain. It’s not as if she’s going to catch anything so it will be a nice relaxing day!
As the afternoon progresses, Maria has lost some bait so something is going on under the surface of the water. 
And then suddenly, the rod moves, and Maria gets excited…. she heads over to the port side rod and wow, she has only gone and caught something. It is time for Maria’s caught a fish song! Now the interesting thing about Maria’s “I caught a fish” song is that apart from the “I have caught a fish” chorus, every other lyric in the song starts with the letter “f” and is a word normally deleted in polite company. Unfortunately I don’t have video evidence, not that I could show until after the watershed! But it’s ok, because she follows up this crowd favourite with a haunting second song, now this one I do have on video!
She’s caught a whiting and is a very happy and proud girl. The rod is ready to go again and she is on a roll. Maria catches a couple more smaller fish but decides to put these back. Now normally when they are a little smaller, Maria struggles to remove the hook and fatally damages the fish. Sometimes it is still moving and she hopefully returns it to the water where it lays on the surface until some passing seagull puts it out of its misery. More recently I have been asked to despatch them. She is on a roll though and really enjoying herself, work is something that effects other people. That’s how a weekend should be. Then late on, Maria has more luck! This time it’s a larger sea bass, and we have video evidence…..
Clearly I was very confident about Maria’s prowess with a fishing rod and not at all surprised so we had the meat for a BBQ already out on the side, so no fish supper tonight!
Another relaxed evening chatting and, it has to be said, that since Maria’s weight loss, dancing has featured a lot again. She’s happy 🙂
The next morning we are to return to Ipswich and it is a glorious day: bright sunshine, and a southerly wind of about 20 knots. Perfect wind to get Mariadz going and we can have a nice relaxed sail home. The boat is ready to go and we get the anchor up in the now familiar way with Maria controlling the windlass from my instructions. To my knowledge this is the only time Maria has ever obeyed my instructions 🙂
We have decided that we will sail and drift all the way home today, there is no rush and although we have a few chores we want to get done, as long as we are back before 3pm all is fine. It’s a day for all three sails as the reasonably steady wind comes across our decks from the starboard side. The staysail is deployed first and comes out easily, the lubrication the other week has done a great job. Next for the main. This is normally a one person job, keeping an eye on the sail as the winch pulls it out. The sound of the winch is always a good tell-tale for how it is coming out, as the winch starts to struggle you normally pull on the outhaul to ease it. We have done this consistently for four years while we have owned the boat. That said, when we first got her we had a couple of mild sail jams as the main was furled into the mast. However, we soon found a technique for avoiding these by keeping the tension on the main as it furled. This and the boom being horizontal stopped any creases in the sail which could then cause a jam. As I say we have had four years of jam-free sailing so the technique seems to work. Until today! The sail is a third out when it folds against itself and jams solid! I notice that we have a crease and the sail has stopped coming out from the mast. Not good. The sail will not come out and will not go back in again. The problem area is too high to reach so I will have to use a combination of pull from the outhaul, jiggling from the furling mechanism and leverage from pulling down on the sail occasionally to see if I can shift the fold that is jamming the mechanism. Initial results are not good but I persevere with the sail under tension, trying to adjust the angle of attack on the crease. There is movement but there is still a crease at the top of the sail. The problem area is moving up the mast so I decide that with the wind veering slightly behind a slight change of course will allow me to safely deploy the whole sail and remove the crease once and for all. 
It is slowly coming out just using sail tension and the furler now and Maria is keeping a watchful eye as well as keeping an eye on our course and other water users.
We’re clear and I even bring in a little of the main just to check that the fold doesn’t reappear. It’s all good. So we then turn our attention to the head sail and with roughly half of these flying we are sailing comfortably.
But the episode of the sail jam makes you think, what would we have done if we hadn’t been able to clear the jam. The answer lies in my trusty red rope with a loop in one end. This rope is the equivalent of James Milner, or Fabian Delph, for those who like their football. It’s a do anything, equally well, rope. It has acted as a harness for an outboard, a replacement main sheet holding the boom in place, a dog lead as well as any number of uses where a short strong line was necessary. Today, as it has previously, it would have been a sail tie. We would have loosened off the outhaul, trusty red line would then have pulled all of the offending sail into the mast and with a couple of wraps would have held the sail in place with little showing. But all of that isn’t necessary today and we can enjoy our sail up the Stour. As we get up towards Harwich the wind gets a little stronger and to be fair at this stage we would normally have reefed all of the sails to reduce the power from the wind driving Mariadz. We generally reef the sails a lot and early, Mariadz is more than capable of handling that much power, although she sails more comfortably and faster when nice and steady rather than heavily heeled.
We make the turn at Felixstowe towards Ipswich with the wind directly behind us. This disappoints Clyde who was really enjoying the sea air.
There are quite a few larger yachts behind us in the forty something range. Now we are very clearly cruising sailors, we have never raced a yacht or any sailing vessel competitively and to be fair I don’t think we have anything like the sailing skills to do this well. However that does mean that Maria is not competitive, and maybe me too! Although we are not racing, whenever there are two boats sailing Ona river that are reasonably well matched a race shall ensue. Maria’s view is very similar to Gandalf in Lord of the Rings, when faced with an army of Orcs – “you shall not pass!”. This is normally accompanied by a soundtrack of “Ad, Ad…” any time someone gains on us. Mariadz is not the fastest boat but of course being a little longer than a number of other boats helps to keep her ahead. Of course, if the worst comes to the worst, we can always switch on the iron sail, with its water free exhaust, meaning no-one would know…. not that we would ever do that!
The trip up river is relaxing but the wind has veered a little to the West which means it is slightly in our faces as we get to the top of the river. It is also intermittent which is caused by the the hills and trees on the banks which funnel the wind, giving changes of wind direction, spots where it is very blowy and other spots where it seems still. This presents some challenges for us trying to keep on course up the winding river when we are tight to the wind. As we go past Wolverstone, conditions and our angle to the wind improve and we are clear now until the Orwell bridge where we must call into the lock, take the sails down and prepare for mooring.
We haven’t seen many other yachts for a while, obviously laying in a trail of dust behind us! But up ahead, we have Lister Light again, that’s two weekends on the trot. They are drifting nicely down river having a leisurely sail with Sally at the helm. To be fair I really wanted to pass them on the “wrong” side so we could get a better lit picture but at least the got a good one of us just before we took the sails down.
Now clearly , we are very careful putting the mainsail away and are even more vigilant in checking for folds as the sail goes away. It seems to curl away fine and so we breath a sigh of relief although the true test will be when we next take the sail out! The lock is easy and soon we are in our berth, tied up nicely (that’s Mariadz is tied up rather than Maria, by the way) and thinking about dinner. 
Hang on, don’t we have two gorgeous fish we can eat….straight on the BBQ in foil with our own Italian olive oil, lemon and vegetables.
Accompanied with fish skewers and a salad it is very healthy and more than we can eat. Please ignore the optical illusion of a cheeky glass of white!
so the end of a cracking, relaxing weekend. The best part of it? The fact that nothing new had broken…but I still haven’t fixed all the breakages from the last weekend away so it’s a small mercy.
The Alma is a lovely pub that sells very fresh lobster and beautiful cuts of beef, all listed on a blackboard, when it’s gone, it’s gone! The food as always was really nice. We had a cracking evening chatting which was capped off beautifully with a quick dance to a live band – Lars and Laura know how to make an exit. The obligatory exchange of a few presents including our crew t-shirts for our friends. In the picture is their very own “Anne Plummer”, she’s a very popular artist, don’t you know!
It does amaze us though how comfortable the cats are on the boat. No matter what the conditions, they seem happy and relaxed. When it is bad they stay quite close to us for reassurance but when it is a nice day like today they stretch lazily and chill. We have a number of friends who have commented that they don’t necessarily believe in reincarnation but if they did, 
and could choose, they would like to return as Maria’s cat – spoilt isn’t the word!
The final job is to raise the anchor ball that tells everyone during the day that we are anchored. This is attached half way up a spinnaker line run down to the deck, we hoist it about ten feet up so that it is easily seen. Obviously at night the anchor light at the top of the mast is illuminated so that people know where we are. These signs usually work very well and people know where you are and keep clear. Unless of course they are a blue hulled scouts boat, in which case you need to switch on the spreader spotlights and everything else you have got before they hit you!
We decide to stay up in the cockpit as Maria prepares the feast of fish which is our lunch and dinner, or so we thought. As you can see from the picture, Maria has a little furry friend. Now Clyde is rather partial to prawns and demands them as an almost daily treat. When Maria brought the platter up, Clyde stirred. Ah, treat time and wow what a great selection. What shall I have first mummy? Maria of course obliges and starts feeding him lobster. LOBSTER! Is there another word that is more than spoilt… hmm a very lucky cat.
The sun is going down and as we look down the river we see lister Light with the young Thompson family on board. yeah that ones for you Sally 🙂 you owe us. 
So our neighbours who are 250 metres away from us in Ipswich are the same distance from us in the stour. But wow doesn’t their boat look great in that light.
While the Thompson’s have their own great evening, we are settled down listening to music. It’s a lovely evening with a variety of music and we go to bed at a reasonable time. Of course with Maria that is any time before 4am – but it was early even by these standards!
Obviously that changes the weather and of course it starts to rain but not before I get the rail mount fitted and the bbq fitted. Really convenient, now if only the food would cook quicker!
The design exercise was quite complex since we knew how the area was likely to be used. Just looking at the access areas for the cockpit made that clear. We have two side entrances and also access at the aft end of the cockpit. During the winter, most people come in via the aft entrance. We were keen to make sure that people didn’t stand on the seating, irrespective of the entrance and so a number of folding sections were incorporated so that these could be lifted to provide a step and to stop the cushions being spoilt. These folds were two at the aft area of the cockpit and one on each side. James incorporated a nice way of fixing these with Velcro underneath the seat and a flap which meant that the join was very strong and invisible when the seat was setup – much better than two cushions butted up to each other with Velcro on the edges. This works for all four entrances into the cockpit.
When I say “our”, I do mean Maria, Bonnie, Clyde and myself, since the cats like to be on deck when we sail. This area has full backs to make it comfortable but these were a real headache to get right with the curve of the cockpit and the shape of the back that cushions need to rest against. All other areas have a selection of loose cushions, in a couple of contrasting colours, that can be used for the backs. This gives flexibility and also means that when Maria sits behind the wheel steering with her feet, she is surrounded by comfy cushions.
Sometimes she is brilliant and other times not quite at the top of her game. In the early days of our relationship, I probably didn’t go into this wholehearted. There was some recognition that I wasn’t the best singer! But now I give it my best shot, and I apologise for any bleeding ears brought on by my enthusiasm.
– one of the few that I could find that had a wireless microphone and a wireless base station. You need this if the diva is going to be able to do her dance moves although she would probably prefer the whole Madonna headset!
– something to hold the iPad with the lyrics on
which the iPad can link to and remove a trip hazard
Now I have to say that my first thought on this was that it was a woman that we met in a Colchester night club, that I needed Maria to protect me from! But no, apparently, it is from Siberia, freezing cold and dumps a load of rubbish on you. So completely different then!
We often get asked how we survive winters on the boat, surely we get cold! The answer has always been that we have heating, however, this winter is sorely testing our heating setup.
Reverse cycle air conditioning isn’t the most efficient system either and I suspect the fact that the water in the marina is frozen in places is not helping. So we use a combination of a couple of air con units boosted from time to time by the Dyson heater. The other useful item for our comfort is the heated blanket on our bed which has individual controls for each side. This goes on early evening, makes the bed warm for bedtime and keeps it lovely and warm all night.
we’re accustomed to a bit of snow and the few inches we got in the first few days was less than the light snow we had just before leaving Austria. In Austria, that didn’t take much effort to clear but in the UK the story is very different. Fortunately we have the land cruiser to drive around but the roads are terrible around the marina and in Ipswich itself. The pontoons will of course get more treacherous as the snow melts and refreezes overnight. Our snow boots will be tested then.
We had spoken to Lindsay at Seapower about this some time ago and there was concern that we may need to replace the entire throttle control with a completely new and very different unit. The first job though was to check that we didn’t have issues with the throttle cable and particularly the gear cable that allows you to select between forward, neutral and astern. This was one of the jobs arranged for while we were away skiing in Austria. On our return from holiday, Maria was planning to turn the boat around so she was bows-to the pontoon. This is our preferred wat round and gives her a nice view over the stern to Ipswich Centre. It provided us an opportunity to test the new setup. After the work was done, there was a complete lack of swearing when Maria was turning the boat around so I think we have a result!
To avoid this problem, we took the decision to buy a generator with a lower power output (7kW) so that we were always using a high proportion of its capacity. In the few instances where we need more than this for a very short period, the inverter charger could pull from the batteries but this was likely to be for seconds and so wouldn’t impact the batteries too much.
This has been in place exactly two years and had around 70 hours of use so a little worrying. Of course a broken impeller is not good news and we are grateful that the generator hadn’t overheated because of the lack of water flowing through the system. We are now investigating what has happened but I understand that we may need to be more careful at checking the generator when it hasn’t been used for a little while. I suspect more frequent changes of impeller will be required too.
So our overnight load is not great, even with the fridges and everything else running we shouldn’t take more than 10% of the total capacity or 20% of the available capacity running throughout the night. I get up in the morning to find our battery monitoring reporting 0% capacity! Have I inadvertently left something on? I check everything and there are no problems. Running the generator during the day gets the batteries back up but it seems very strange.
Ollie from Seapower usually does our electrical work and unfortunately with me and Maria working hard at the moment, we can’t afford the delays while we sort this out ourselves. We just need it done and can’t wait for me to get back late from work, reorder, wait and then fit. Ollie comes on board and wires us a temporary solution while the plug is being delivered and also checks the batteries.
bought some cheap and cheerful directors’ chairs with Mariadz on the backs. These are lightly made and don’t stand up to much punishment, or time, particularly. In fact we have gone through a few sets of these as they have fallen apart. Being a bit of a hoarder, I have generally salvaged what I can from the broken chairs to use as spares for future chairs. However we always decided that, before we go, we would splash out on some well made, sturdy chairs that will last. Unfortunately these cost nearly ten times as much! So that expenditure hadn’t been prioritised….
We knew what we wanted and so went to the London Boat Show earlier this year with the intent of finding these chairs. We rarely do to this show any more because there is hardly anything there, preferring the Southampton boat show, but we were in luck and stumbled across their store. The boat show price was good and we were also able to get Mariadz embroidered on the backs in gold, I’m assuming real gold. These chairs are built from harder wood which is thicker, feel sturdy and good quality and are light years ahead of the old chairs. The cushions are very comfortable although we also had other options on these which Maria had to think long and hard about. It means that we spent More than an hour choosing exactly what we wanted, and this also included having to find our friend Dan to give us another opinion! When you consider that we knew exactly what we wanted before we arrived, this sounds even more ridiculous. They are now in pride of place in the saloon. This has presented me with a couple of problems: Maria now looks at the upholstery in the saloon and wants to change it to match the colour of the seats and they are so nice I am loath to put them into the lazzerette for fear of damaging them. Now I need something to protect them! Maybe another bag….
topper for a king sized bed which went over the top of the mattress. This worked well and stopped us being eaten by the gap in the bed. It also meant that we slept on something new rather than on someone else’s bed. I know you do it all the time in hotels but somehow it feels wrong when it is your own bed.
This wasn’t the cheapest option but we were keen to have a long term solution. Julie-Ann at Passmore was really helpful since we were keen to have a joined up mattress with two different halves. The split is needed to allow access to the storage and machinery (aircon) under the bed. Despite the knowledge that they would be a perfect size we were still keen to have a zip joining the two mattresses together and since nobody wants to sleep on a zip, a cloth cover over the zip to make sure the 
bed was comfortable. The visprung beds are quite firm and there was an option to go extra firm which Maria toyed with, in the end we are grateful that we went with “only” the firm mattress.
Maybe like their ginger friend…..
Like St Anton this one had a heated outhouse but maybe not quite so plush. However, the other facilities were excellent with a heated indoor/outdoor pool and a spa. We knew Maria would want to spend some time in there.
As you approach the centre of Brussels there is a beautiful building in front of you, the Basilique Nationale de Sacre-Cœur à Koekelberg, which looks magnificent. It guards the entrance to the Tunnel Leopoldo II. It is very pretty, thank you Sam for showing us this……. and then we have a 2.2metre height restriction on the tunnel! Sharp turn left, since that height would take off our heads as well as a lot of the van, and turn around. We had not come too far so we probably only lost 15-20 minutes with the detour before we are back on the by-pass and safely on our way to Cologne.
To be fair they have been great for the entire journey with Clyde spending a lot of time on Mum’s lap and Bonnie sitting up high keeping an eye on things. Obviously except when she also wants some mummy lap time – they really are awfully big cats to have on your lap for a long time. They are incredible really and never bother the driver, although Maria doesn’t get any rest!
”. I trudge down the hill and explain to Maria that we have to get our new snow chains out and fit them quickly, and this will be our first time. Fortunately I have a large old cardboard box that I can lay out flat on the floor to provide me some protection against the snow. We have them out of the box and I vaguely recall how it works from the time we test fitted them onto the land cruiser a few years ago, the instructions are the same but it will take some time. At this point a very kind Austrian gentleman came down the road we were blocking and seeing our predicament and our confused faces, took control. He had clearly done this many times before. He had them fitted in minutes and we did some roll forward and back tests before tightening up and we were ready to go. Maria tried to ply him with a very nice bottle of red wine as a thank you but he would not have it and left us with only our gratitude – aren’t the Austrians nice!
Even with the snow chains on, we’re struggling for grip, I wonder if I would have had more luck if I had reversed up the hill. Obviously with Maria walking ahead of the van…. may be that isn’t such a great idea after all. Anyway we’re in! Now to negotiate the even thinner, snow-covered roads within the site to get to the far corner where our posh pitch is located. I am just about to turn into the very tight blind corner after reception when I see the lights of an oncoming vehicle. It is a four wheel drive BMW with no snow chains on but with winter tyres and he brakes ten metres away, locks up and drifts gently towards us….I think he misses us by inches with nowhere for me to go but it reminds me that the potential for disaster on this trip is far from over even without Sam’s help. A couple more cars drift by with a subset of wheels locked up before we can start to head up the hill. We find our pitch which is on the edge of the site facing the lifts and slopes, what a perfect spot.
Mariadz 