During our stay in Limehouse, we had found time to visit Broom owning friends, Richard & Margaret Clementson, who had arranged for their daughter to take us up in a small Warrier monoplane, for a view of the Kent coast not often seen by boaters. This was a fascinating experience, and we got a bird's eye view of Dover marina which went a long way towards explaining the stories we had heard of the difficult tide outside the west entrance. As the end of January approached we began to look for a window in the weather, planning to make our return journey to Great Yarmouth to complete our winter boating foray. After a week of of north easterly gales, we saw a break in the weather for today and, with a 7.00am lock arranged out of Limehouse, made a dawn departure from our month-long home.

Following discussion with Raymarine at the boat show, it had transpired that the fault with our autopilot was a known problem that could be rectified by swapping over the circuit board. We made an arrangement to rendezvous with Kent based electrical engineer Dave Holden at Queenborough, who would do the job with spare parts sent to him by the manufacturer.

With the pleasure boats not yet underway we had a nice, calm trip downriver towards the Estuary, spotting "Radio Caroline" moored at Tilbury docks enroute. We had liased with Dave by text message and he was on station at the all-tide jetty to take our ropes when we arrived at 10.30am. The job proved relatively straight forward and after a calibration sea trial, we even had time for Dave to give us an RNLI Sea Check assessment, in his role as Saftey Advisor. We came through with flying colours, amazing him with the contents of our grab bag and our emergency procedures!

As the day was still fine, we decided to press on to Burnham on Crouch, where we planned to meet up with Cruising Association friends from the Essex section. Fortunately, we had already planned this next leg on the GPS and Maxsea, giving our newly working autopilot the chance to follow the track up the West Swin and close round Whittaker Spit. The Crouch is not our favourite estuary, but we had managed to arrive at high water, minimising any risk from the tricky sand banks.

We were greeted at Burnham Yacht Harbour by a dinner invitation from the Bradleys, and spent a convivial evening in the company of Stuart, Marjorie and Laura.

Cruising Statistics

Distance: 99 nm

Total to date: 99 nm

Avg Speed: 10.5 knots

Duration: 9:30 hours

Diesel: 291 litres, 39p/l

Wind:NW 4

Electricity: Included

Bridges

Limehouse marina (swing)

Charts

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