Mood:
a-okNow Playing: Red River Valley (Michael Martin Murphey)
Topic: Events
Well ... went on the sailing trip ... and that was quite fun. We didn't arrive on Friday till about 6/7 pm I think ... by the time we got settled into the boat we then decided to motor up from Woolverstone Marina up to Shotley Marina as we were planning on having dinner there at the Shipwreck restaurant. We had to hurry since we thought the restaurant took last orders at 9:15 (Roger had to call the restaurant to see what time) ... we were slightly worried but we made it there for about 9 ... but at the Shotley marina there is a lock. Quite interesting. The boat has to go through a flood gate which is then closed and water is added in (it was low tide) from the marina to raise its level until it equalises and then the boat (yacht or whatever) can then motor in and berth. We had to stabilize the boat in the floodgates with boat hooks (and I had to do it - and no clue what I was doing but it worked!!)
Well, we were worried since filling up the lock took a long while but the guy on duty tried to fill it up as fast as possible for us since we told him we were trying to make it to the restaurant. Tina and Linda sort of left Roger and I to deal with the mooring as they hurried to the restaurant. As we were sailing into our berth (is that what is is called??) - some guy just say me standing uncertainly at the bow and asked if we needed help ... and Roger said yes ... so, I didn't have to do anything.
As it turned out ... last orders were being taken from 9:30 ... so, we had some more time than we anticipated :).
We stayed there overnight and the next morning I was going up to the bathrooms ... I was trying to fix my sandals when my glasses popped out of my face, bounced off the pier where I was standing and then went into the water and I stood there watching it ... sink further and further with a flabbergasted look and not doing anything about it. So, didn't have my glasses ... Roger tried to see if he could fetch it out with a boat hook but to no avail - it was just too deep (and as this was a lock - there was no possibility of saying I could wait till low tide!) ... anyway, I know where exactly where my glasses is ... it's between berth F35 and F37 on the Shotley marina ... Hopefully some catfish might find it useful :P.
Well ... even without my glasses ... Roger still allowed me to steer the boat and I think I did pretty well considering I was considerably blind. I even did some steering when we were tacking ... which was great - and also got to do some tacking as well ... I like tacking it's fun and it is sort of exhilarating at the same time. We sailed most of Saturday up the River Stowe onto the town of Misterly and as we were sailing back down to the Orwell we had lunch ... as we were sailing up to Orwell we got caught in some huge rain storms and we got soaked and then dried again (well we had waterproof on - so not really soaked :D) ... and somewhere as we were approaching the Woolverstone Marina, the clouds opened and it poured and there was thunder and lightening as well ... we got sufficiently scared that we motored our way back up to the marina (we were sailing all the time - we were going pretty fast about 4.5 knots over land).
Then as I couldn't drive (no glasses) ... Roger dropped Tina and I back in Milton Keynes and my car is still at Linda's ... Linda went on to see her parents. It was pretty terrible conditions to drive back in since it was pouring rain at times ... and the spray was horrible ... it really obscured a lot of cars.
