Leg 1..... from David...

Sunday 8th April

Well the adventure has started despite the last minute sorting of minor problems.

However you plan to sail from Hartlepool to Lowestoft it involves one 24 hour period at sea.  The logical way to do it was to do it was in one chunk and, with that in mind Stuart had planned to come with me for the first leg – about  40 hours non-stop sailing  – 3 hours on 3 hours off. 

So at 15:00 Akira, with one very worried skipper and the boat owner (Stuart), motored  forth through the lock at Hartlepool into a windless North Sea.   There was so little wind that we didn’t even put up the sails; we simply motored steadily South past Whitby and Grimsby towards our destination.

Eventually the tide started to flow against us and it was clear that we needed to check how much fuel we had left so the youngest member of the crew was given the job of crawling into the cockpit locker to see how much we had left.  The general feeling was that we would get half way across the Wash before we ran out of fuel – not a happy thought!  So we decided to put the anchor down behind Filey Head (this would protect us from the NE winds that had been predicted earlier) to await the promised winds an get the tide behind us again.

By this time we were both tired so jumped into bed expecting a couple of hours sleep.  No such luck - within 30 minutes the wind was blowing and we had get going again.  During the next few hours the wind got stronger so, in the middle of the night, I got Stuart up (he had literally just got into his bunk!) and put a reef in.   By this time the sea state and direction made it very difficult for “George” to steer so I spent 3 hours helming as we wandered  through the gas fields of the Southern North Sea.

As dawn approached the sky began to clear and I could see an immense structure in the distance and, as I got closer, it was clear that it had support boats making sure people like us stayed away.  The boat was lik3 sheep dog gentle shepherding out his area.  When I had reached the perimeter he was guarding he stopped.

Looking back at the structures after we had passed the sun light caught it in a golden orangey red and I could see it was actually 3 very large pieces of construction linked together.

For a while we had a good sail, even making 5 knots against the tide however the wind died  and we had to resort to the engine again.  We eventually arrived in Lowestoft at 00:30 Sunday morning after covering 185nm.

 It goes without saying Stuart and I were not up very early next day.

Stuart has gone home and I, having seen the weather forecast, will not set out until Wednesday (it is currently blowing a gale here!) when I hope to get to the Harwich area.