Friday 23rd December – Bar open
Come and join us on Friday 23rd December at 7pm for a pre-Christmas get together. The fire will be on with pizzas available and mulled wine on the bar. Members and guests welcome at this cosy festive get together. We hope to see you there but if not we wish you all the very best for the forthcoming festive period. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
Tuesday 20th December – VHF Course
5 members enjoyed a day at the club on Tuesday 20th December while attending a short range VHF radio course. Chris from East Coast Motor Boat Training, who previously provided 2 powerboat level 2 courses, attended the club to conduct the VHF course. Students enjoyed the life like distress and urgency calls such as Mayday and Panpan, on the training radio sets while hoping they will never need to made in real life. A very engaging and informative course leaving the students feeling confident at operating and communicating via VHF.
We hope to offer more courses such as radio, power boat, and first aid in the future. These courses are great to have for your personal accomplishment and development, they are also fundamental skills to aid in providing a safe environment and developing the club activities. If you are interested in any of these courses then please do get in touch to express your interest. If we can secure a minimum number of candidates then these courses can be held at the club.
Friday 16th December
While most members were tucked up by the fireside, Ollie spotted a perfect weather window and with his crew Dan sailed “Elise” to Woodbridge and back in sub-zero conditions and provided a Christmas entry to our Passage Logs series.
Southwold-Woodbridge-Southwold
We did it!! 70 nautical mile round trip in the freezing cold aboard my 20 foot trailer sailer. We loaded up the icy boat and set off on Friday morning at 10:00.
Conditions were perfect with about 12 knots off the land and a beam reach all the way to the river Deben entrance, surprisingly we were very warm and only cracked out the hot water bottles after about 2 hours in. My new jet boil was an absolute dream in topping up the water bottles and making cuppa soups. Beef and tomato being my favourite. We entered the Deben and motor’d the length of the river to the Tide Mill in Woodbridge due to a head wind. This was planned and the tide was under us so we were doing about 5.5knots SOG.
The sun set and the temperature dropped further and we began to feel the cold in our toes even more. We arrived after just over 6.5 hours. After a hot shower we hit the town for for a few beers and a decent meal. We got back on board and every thing was icy, so after getting into our sleeping bags (3 each) pre loaded with hot water bottles every thing was absolutely amazing! Until……… Danny started snoring!
After some sleep we were up at 4:30 am and 30mins later we were finally dressed. Our breath had formed a layer of ice on the inside of the cabin, and the entire boat was thick with ice, as I scrambled into the cockpit I saw the marina was frozen over. We fired up the motor and broke our way out in darkness, navigating under moon light we could just make out the trot mooring buoys and I already had a few tracks on my plotter so we were technically good to go.
Then we had the most surreal experience, there were sheets of ice in the Chanel, so we were literally ice breaking, at a steady 2 knots we were now the Deben Ice breaker!!! Danny was inside the cabin and heard it from the inside. Our small wake rippling through these sheets of ice made the most unbelievable noise as we made our way seaward In darkness and with a crackling noise over both shoulders! eventually after a few cappuccinos, a hot water bottle, and some time we popped out of the Deben to a rather fresh SW breeze on the nose and still in darkness.
Any one who knows the Deben and it’s recent channel marker Buoy doing a runner to Belgium, knows what was going through our minds upon exiting. Luckily I’ve got a few decent tracks from this season and we sounded the inbound journey with 1.6m under us at half tide. As long as I stayed on the track then we shouldn’t run aground! The sails went up as did the sun; and the lights twinkled at Felixstowe like a Christmas tree. We had a cup of soup as we settled into our passage home.
The wind was right on the stern so we goose winged it and headed out to sea as to stay outside the banks. We then had an amazing broad reach back to Southwold. The wind picked up as per forecast, with 24 knot gusts true, and full main and Genoa up. My previous record of 9.7 knots was smashed as we surfed wave after wave hitting over 10 knots SOG time and time again. The tiller pilot is next to useless in these conditions so hand steering took all my concentration as Danny looked after me and made good use of the new amazing Jetboil. The donuts came out for breakfast as I kept my sticky hands on the tiller whilst surfing on a dead run.
We finally got back to our berth at 11:30 am. So In about 25.5 hours, we sailed 70 nautical miles, had a night out in Woodbridge, listened to Danny snoring, used Elise as an ice breaker, had probably the best 25 mile downwind sail, we stayed warm and most importantly had one of the most memorable trips ever. Oh and we didn’t see a single leisure boat any where!!!😂 we tried to take some decent footage on the way back but unfortunately the best wave sets came when we weren’t filming.
What did I learn? you can have the best sailing in winter and next time I’ll get heated insoles. For me it was the best way to round this year off as I’ve Clocked over 600 nautical miles in Elise this year. I’m well and truly boated out. Merry Christmas all.