Quite a lot of boating.
Well the last little while has certainly proved to be extremely eventful, hence the lack of updates. I will therefore be brief on each count and may even split over two posts updates.
Two weeks after the Dragon Boat racing at Oulton Broad it was the NBN summer BBQ at Salhouse Broad and a great evening was had by all with the usual high standard of BBQ food and good beer. The following day, fortunately not hung over, I joined up with friends John & Lucy for a wander around the Strumpshaw RSPB Reserve in some gloriously hot weather. I did not even know this place existed so it was something quite different for me and provided some opportunities to use the camera.
A week later and it was our summer holiday out aboard Bandicoot. However, chaos rained in the build up to the holiday. Bandicoot was still waiting for new headlinings and new carpeting. It quickly became apparent the new carpeting was not going to happen so we resigned ourselves to bare floors. But the headlinings were more of a problem - without them she is pretty much uninhabitable. Fortunately our supplier managed to deliver them a few days before departure but when we started the process of fitting them on the Friday night it quickly became apparent this would not be a 5 min job. Eventually, after several hours and too little light left to work in we gave up having put one of about 16 linings back in position. It wasn’t looking good.
Saturday we took the morning off but came back in the afternoon and got cracking with much greater success. By 1900hrs we had all of the main roof linings in place which meant the wires were gone and the lighting re-instated, plus we had space to move around the saloon. As a bit of a spur-of-the-moment decision we started her up and headed down to Cantley to join up with Mark & Sharon on Serenity, Phil & Carron on Binky and Gav & Ann on Namaste. We were on a standing invite to join them at The Reedcutter for some live music provided by local man Tosh.
The night was excellent from start to finish, the company great, the beer good and the entertainment and music from Tosh top stuff. After that finished we retired aboard Binky and continued to keep the neighbours awake until 0330hrs!
The arrival of Sunday brought with it the realisation that in our haste to leave the marina at 1930hrs the night before Bandicoot was in no state to take on a week of travelling. We returned to Brundall to stock up properly, fill with diesel and be pumped out. Unfortunately the weather was so bad (very high winds) we were unable to put into our usual mooring for much of the day.
We headed out again on the Monday and took her up to Breydon to open up. However things did not go so well - the engine ran okay but one of the pipes on the raw water system spring a leak again and the trim tab system failed with one tab fully down and the other nearly fully down. The result was the boat could not be allowed to attain her proper cruising attitude which made cruising extremely uncomfortable (significant starboard list) and uneconomical (two huge trim tabs dug in the water slowing us down). Combined with that the leaking hose meant the engine could not be run at high revs. After a disappointing trial we headed down to Somerleyton with the intention of waiting overnight to clear the failed swing bridge on the morning tide.
As it turned out we already had clearance when we arrived so, after a brief stop for dinner, we headed on down to the Waveney River Centre and again met up with Mark & Sharon from Serenity, Gav & Ann from Namaste as well as Wayne & Tracey from Sea Gem and another good evening was had.
The following morning Serenity, Namaste and Sea Gem headed to Oulton Broad to lock through and out into the salt. There they would rendezvous with other boats two large to get under the stuck Somerleyton Bridge who were instead putting to sea through Yarmouth Harbour. The fleet would then head down the coast to Southwold. Unfortunately Bandicoot was in no condition to undertake such a journey so we put into Oulton Broad Yacht Station for a few hours and then headed down to Beccles, stopping a few times on the way.
After a night in Beccles we headed back to Oulton Broad YS and took up a position on the outer floating pontoon. An excellent evening was had when friends Claire & Mark joined us for an Indian and then drinks aboard Bandicoot - Susan honing her G&T swilling skills very nicely. The next day we spent cleaning and continuing to put Bandicoot back together before friends John & Lucy joined us in the evening.
On the Friday late afternoon we pushed off from Oulton Broad YS and headed back to the WRC again where, after an unpleasant incident with a less than helpful neighbour, we again met up with the Southwold fleet - all but one of the fleet boats being there this time.
Come Saturday and it was time to return to the marina and we headed back all the way to Brundall, getting there early evening, bring the holiday to a close.
Pictures from the NBN BBQ at Salhouse Broad can be found here.
Pictures from Strumpshaw RSPB Reserve can be found here.
Pictures from the Whitsun Week out boating can be found here.