Wednesday 18 June
Trip Statistics
Panorama picture
Lowestoft to Brundall
Engine Hours, Fuel, and other rivetting stats!
View from the back of Starry Night at our new mooring
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We've made it! The trip from Lowestoft to Brundall was quite straightforward. We had booked the railway bridge at Mutford for a swing just after the 9:02 train passed through. We got a call from Mutford lock on the VHF to say that the bridge would be slightly delayed because the "engineers" had been held up in traffic - the main road bridge in Lowestoft by the harbour was stuck open! We didn't immediately clock the key word "engineers".
When we arrived at the bridge we saw that it was swathed in scaffolding from top to bottom and the trains passed through a sort of tunnel as they crossed it. There was building stuff everywhere and a major refurb of the bridge going on. There were a couple of engineers at either end of the bridge underneath it where the mechanism for locking the swinging part is located, and they were feverishly undoing things and operating jacks and what have you. We decided that they must be having to disassemble something so that the bridge could be swung to let us through. It took these four blokes the best part of 20 minutes to get the bridge ready and then it opened - just for us. Presumably they had to put it all back together again before the next train was due.
After that, we locked into Oulten Broad, paid our dues for a one day passage to Brundall, and were on our way. The railway swing bridges at Somerleyton and Readham opened without much delay. We will need to check the railway timetable now that we are "residents" here so we can time our arrival better for just in time operation. By 13:00 we had arived at our new marina in Brundall and we were made very welcome.
We were offered lots of help in getting moored up and settled in. These are tidal moorings with a rise and fall of around two to three feet on fixed pontoons. It took a couple of hours to get everything sorted out so that we were happy that the lines and fenders would cope with the tideal range and keep Starry Night off the mooring posts. Then we set about tidying up, packing, servicing and so on. Our plan is to spend tomorrow sorting out Starry Night so she can be left tidy and fully serviced with new oil, filters and so on. Then we head for home on Friday.
The autopilot saga was hopefully resolved; Raymarine are going to let us keep the loan unit which seemed to work OK, and we send them back our old one. Not bad considering the old one was five years old! Raymarine get my supplier of the year award!
Starry Night in here new berth in Brundall
- Engine - 196 hours of running and two services including idling.
- Reading to Brundall - 1014 nautical miles (1116 statute miles) - an overall average of 5.1 knots!
- Fuel used - 868 litres of diesel at ridiculous prices that will probably look like a bargain next year
- Photographs - 1021 pics at 5.5 GB!
- Appelgebaks and coffee - only two this time - what will-power!
- Griddling - only one - too windy or no where to do it!
- Fish dinners - lots and lots - The Netherlands is good for fish
- Wildlife - plenty seen on this trip but no seals this time
- Beers - too many to count!
On that happy note, this is the end of the diary for our 2008 cruise to the Netherlands.
Our view from the back of Starry Night at our new mooring in Brundall
Copyright © 2008-2009 Mike Hawkridge