By stopping at Lowestoft we have already ticked off one of the key milestones of a circumnavigation of Britain, because it is the easternmost point on the island. By the end of August, all being well, Goldfinch will have the northernmost and the westernmost points behind her, leaving only the most southerly place (the Lizard in Cornwall) for next year's season.
The town of Lowestoft looks as if it once had reason to be proud, but the parts of the town we saw gave the impression that it has fallen on hard times. Many shops were closed - permanently, I mean, not just because of Covid - and their facades looked sad and unloved. Perhaps it's the tragedy of a place that not ony once relied on a now-declining industry, but is also at the furthest edge of the country, not on the way to anywhere.
But I don't want to claim I can sum up a place based on one saunter round some of its streets. It had a positive face too. Along the sea-front there was all life: families sitting on windswept benches bravely eating ice-cream, stalls selling inflatable goods, dogs and children getting excited on the pebbly beach, regardless of the chilly east wind that was coming in across the tea-dark sea.
We had moored the boat in a small marina run by the Royal Norfolk & Suffolk Yacht Club, whose grand but oddly-shaped clubhouse is filled with trophies and pictures of past commodores shaking hands with various royals. They were friendly and welcoming towards visiting yachtsmen, and had the further advantage that their marina is accessible at all times, unlike the other establishment in Lowestoft, which can only be reached by going under a lifting bridge that keeps to a strict timetable. This was important to us, because we had to leave at midnight. It really is true that time and tide wait for no one.
Our next port of call would be Wells-next-the-Sea, in Norfolk. It's over 50 miles round the coast from Lowestoft, so once again it was vital to have the tide flowing in our favour for as much time as possible, and as luck would have it that meant leaving in the middle of the night.
For these night passages we are taking it in turns to be awake. There are five of us on this leg. We've split into two teams or 'watches', so that when Debbie, Bryan and Steve are busy sailing the boat, Mike and I can get a few hours' sleep; every 3 hours we change round so the labour and the sleep are shared out fairly.
When Mike and I came on watch at 3 am, Bryan reported that there had been no wind (so we'd been motoring again), and no other boats or ships to be seen. We had a more eventful watch. Several ships appeared almost at once, and we had fun trying to work out which way they were going and how much risk there was of them hitting us. Then, after they had gone, the sky began to show some dusky light and the wind began to pick up enough to consider sailing. But then before we could act on that notion, a thick bank of fog descended, and all our attention was directed towards keeping eyes and ears peeled for any approaching traffic.
After about 45 minutes of very poor visibility we began to see the horizon again. We set the sails, turned the engine off, and let Goldfinch off the leash. By now the promised tide was with us, and the instruments were showing 8 knots of speed over the ground. A knot is one nautical mile per hour, and a nautical mile is 1.15 times a land mile, so we were doing 9 miles per hour. It doesn't sound much if you are used to driving a car (or even doing a bit of running), but on a sailing boat it feels exciting. And just as importantly, it was getting us to our destination in good time.
The first thing to understand about Wells-next-the-Sea is that it isn't really next to the sea. To get to the harbour we had to go down a very narrow, unbelievably winding channel. Less than an hour before high water, there was occasionally less than a metre depth of water under our keel; either side of the channel we could see waves breaking over the shallow sands. There's over two miles of this before you reach the pontoons where visiting boats can tie up and sample the delights of the town.
And delightful it was. The passage from Lowestoft had been cold, grey and foggy; but by lunchtime, Wells was enjoying blue skies and full sunshine. Smaller than Lowestoft, Wells seems to have been able to reinvent itself as a popular and scenic tourist destination.
Best of all, we had arrived on the day when, after months of Covid restrictions, we were finally permitted to go into a pub, sit down indoors, and enjoy a pint and some food. Which is what we did.
Somehow it feels like we are on holiday now. And tonight we get a full night's sleep for the first time since Friday!
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