We are now the proud owners of 'Croc Bones'. We have had her registered into our name (£80 for a laminated bit of paper.. hummm), received the final documents confirming the sale and even got the keys to open the vast multitude of locks she is bound with making her look like a floating Fort Knox!
Now we needed to take her to what will be her home for the winter until we set off in Feb. Only a short sail (about 25 nm) from Tollesbury to Harwich, we estimated that it would take us 5 hours with the tide. The guy who we are renting the buoy off had given us a clear indication of its location and we felt prepared and excited to get going. Everything had gone so amazingly smoothly to date, what could go wrong now!?
What famous last words to have spoken...
It was an early rise on Saturday morning; Jarvis rushing to Sainsburys to quickly buy and fill up a Petrol Can for the Dingy, and me noting down an intricate combination of train and bus times to ensure that we could get to little ol' Tollesbury… the tiny village of only 3 buses a day.. no matter what rail engineering/delays the British Transport system could throw at us!
We dodged station closures and chavs and made it, problem free to find our nice new shiny Wetline ECO 260 Dingy, and Suzuki Outboard waiting for us at the Marine office. We set everything up, popped it in the water and raced off to go out to Croc Bones, only to find we had not taken into account the amount of tide you need to get out of the sill at the Marina entrance and found ourselves inches away from clogging up the new outboard with thick black mud!
So we waited and explored the little village (which had by far the biggest sunflowers we had ever seen... at least 8 ft. tall) and two hours later set off again and brought ourselves up to Croc Bones! Wahooo we made it! First job done.
We spent a few hours poking around – checking the gas and electrics, making sure the engine would start and finding where everything was then exhaustion kicked in and we made it an early night to prepare for the 6:45am start (super early for us) the next day.
The most beautiful amber and purple sunrise greeted us in the morning, making the fresh morning air and the awkward first night sleep a lot more bearable. We plotted our course and prepared the boat to leave – Jarvis dropping the Buoy and me on the helm. We had tentatively put the main sail up with a third reef in just in case there was a problem with the engine and lucky we did as not 5 minutes from dropping the buoy our engine shot up a piercing screech, bursts of white smoke and a thick burnt rubber smell.
I quickly killed the engine and pulled the hatch to let it cool down – we had no clue as to the problem and with the gale warnings that had been being forecast on the radio becoming a reality, it was starting to get a bit stressful.
The wind picked up and hit 35 knots, all going over tide making it very difficult to get down into the engine bay to find out the problem. Taking turns at peeking in we could see that a pipe had completely blown off and saw the cause of all the problems. In our haste to get going we hadn’t check the engine sea-cocks! They were all closed. Rookie Error!! We quickly opened them and attempted the engine again whilst underway but it would only idle... poorly engine.
We sailed into Harwich a lot later than intended, feeling rather sick and miserable. Yet spotting our buoy we perked up and decided that with the wind in our favour we should be able to sail onto it – drama over. However just as we got within reach the wind changed direction and we had to quickly drop anchor where we were.
It was time to hang our heads in shame and call the coast guard to pull us all of 20 metres to our buoy – so near, yet so far!
Challenge one completed – mistakes made, muscles sore but now we have the task of fixing the engine and will be wiser for it! Challenge two, here we come!!
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