It was a struggle, but we were lucky with the weather and we got all the welding and painting done before the end of spring tides on 26th June. It was flat calm as we motored out of the river Blackwater and we settled to take tricks at the helm and sitting with tea and cakes. To the right Ian explains to Lawrence the safe way of lifting his 1950s binoculars to avoid back injury.

We left the Blackwater at HW and took the ebbing tide along the coast to Harwich, arriving at LW. We passed to the north of the London Array wind farm, with rows of spinning blades.

We anchored opposite the Sealink ferry terminal just before dark and had dinner in the wheelhouse while watching the shipping movements. We could hear the ships coming and going through the night and to the left is a picture of a DFDS ferry arriving at 4am just off our stern. The next morning we raised the anchor and steamed to arrive at the entrance to the river Deben for 2 hours before HW Woodbridge. The Easterly 3-4 wind set up a nasty chop as the small waves crossed the Deben bar and as we stuck to the course in the narrow channel Waterdog rolled horribly. To the right is a snip of the chart showing the restricted entrance and our track in green, the the left Waterdog passes the East Knoll buoy while showing off how much she can roll. We were filmed for the website ‘Felixstowe on Felixstowe’ and have downloaded this video here for our website. Once into the Deben we had a calm and beautiful cruise up to Woodbridge, arriving at HW and slipping into our berth to relief and happiness :-).