Lunar Sea around GB

We had another very early start at 4.30a.m. to catch the tide out of Eyemouth on our next 54 mile trip to Port Edgar up the Firth of Forth.   It was a lovely morning, I saw a beautiful Turner-esque sunrise again and then I went back to bed! There was no wind and flat calm so it was easy to get back to sleep. When I woke up at about 9am we were just passing Bass Rock, which was covered in seabirds so looked white, but not an ice berg thank goodness! It was an amazing site and the rest of the coastline on that journey was breathtaking. In no time we seemed to be in the Firth of Forth, it was strange to see coastline on both sides of the boat and we passed the Isle of Mey in the mist. We could see the famous Firth of Forth railway bridge a long way off although, because of the misty conditions, it didn’t at first look red. It is very iconic and is in fact a UNESCO World Heritage Site (it was opened in 1890). The modern Forth road suspension bridge comes next (celebrating it’s 50...

Up at 4.30 am and we were on our way. We had a rather long and uneventful journey to Eyemouth, Scotland's first port of call, as it styles itself. The coast is changing now to one of islands and rocks, we passed through the Farne Islands and Lindisfarne, Holy Island. There are also castles along the coastline here, some are ruined such as Dunstanburgh and some are still in tact such as Bamburgh.   Bamburgh Castle from Lunar Sea, hence the sloping picture!   Courtesy Flags     It is the custom and good etiquette to fly a small flag of the country you are visiting. So when we sail to France , which we do a lot, half way across the channel we hoist a small French tricolour. Likewise when foreign boats visit us in Ramsgate they should fly a small ensign. We were advised at Amble that the Scots like us English to fly a courtesy flag when entering Scottish waters, not something we had thought about. So we duly bought one in the chandlery at Amble (i...

I left you in Amble so I will pick up from there. "Ar reet" is the common greeting around these parts, being Northumberland for “all right?” We ended up spending five days in this lovely marina because we wanted a rest and the weather was "pooh" a nautical term for not nice to go sailing in. On Sunday we had a pleasant walk to Warkworth Castle after a lunch at the yacht club. For £8 we had a pile of food, roast meat, mash and roast potatoes, carrots, cabbage, roast parsnips and a Yorkshire pudding ("because my wife the chef is from Yorkshire , so you get Yorkshire pudding with everything!" said the man serving us). Warkworth  is a medieval castle, once owned by the Percy family, the powerful Earls (later Dukes) of North Humber Land (the lands north of the Humber.)  The Great Tower is a masterpiece of medieval English architecture and is still very much intact. and several of the rooms were refurbished in the 1850s and still used up to t...

Hartlepool was in County Durham but our next two ports of call are in Northumberland, so we feel we are making progress. The coast is lovely here with sandy beaches but shame about the weather, which is still mainly cold and wet. We left Hartlepool on Thursday morning at 10.35 in sunshine but it didn't last very long. We had an uneventful sail to Blyth apart from a very strange cloud which suddenly gave us heavy rain and gusts of 25 knots for a short while. We arrived at Blyth just after 4 in the afternoon, having been visited by a curious seal on the way in. Once again there are lots of wind farms around here at sea and along the coast and so Blyth is more a commercial port for fishing vessels and wind farm boats than a yacht haven. However we were welcomed at the Royal Northumberland Yacht Club pontoon by their friendly berthing master and heard the lovely Northumberland accent for the first time this trip. He gleefully told us the code for the gate was 1-9-4-5 or 1945, but he ...

Apparently Hartlepool gets it s name because it was know for a pool where harts  (stags or deers ) would come and drink. Sadly both are long gone. Hartlepool marina is another new marina built to revitalise the town and very nice  too. Hartlepool Marina I kept being told "don't wear a monkey suit in Hartlepool" so I had to find out what this meant. There is a tale that a ship was wrecked and the only survivor was a poor bedraggled monkey dressed in a French uniform, supposedly for the amusement of the sailors on the doomed ship. The local townspeople held a trial and considered the monkey to be a French spy so he was hung, poor thing! However it was also said that the ship could not be claimed as treasure trove if there were any survivors, so that is possibly why the monkey was hanged. Monkey collecting for the local hospice Hartlepool 's new marina is man made and it cannot be reached at all states of the tide, so because we need 2 metres of water minimum...

We left Scarborough on Sunday afternoon after spending the morning exploring the castle's 3000 years of history. It was a pleasant evening sail to Whitby passing the picturesque Robin's Hood Bay on the way. We needed to get to Whitby before some bad weather came in the next few days. Full marks to Whitby Marina, the facilities are new and very good. This is the first marina we have been to that has a working laundry, so four loads of washing and drying have been done. There is nothing like clean sheets and towels to raise the spirits I find! Whitby is a lovely little town with an old ruined abbey perched on the headland which inspired Bram Stoker's legendary tale of Dracula. There is also a church reached via 199 steps, which we did not attempt. Whitby is famous for its fish and chips because of the fishing that is done here, there is still a fish market on the quay. We had a lovely fish and chip, mushy peas, bread and butter lunch with a cup of tea included for next ...

Hull’s real name is Kingston because, according to the tourist information, it reflects its initial purchase by King Edward I at the end of the 13th century, who saw in the small trading port its important strategic location between the South and Scotland. During the 18th and 19th centuries the town expanded rapidly as a result of increased trade and was regarded as the country's third port after London and Liverpool.  Its prosperity came from the docks, not only the commercial docks handling freight from around the world but also the fish docks. We had our friends Peter and Olivia with us for a couple of days and Olivia had grown up in Hull. Her family were fishermen so she told us lots of really interesting stories about growing up in the dock area of Hull. The fishermen had a hard life often being away for weeks at a time as they travelled North to fish and fishermen were sometimes lost at sea. Olivia told me about the Land of Green Ginger and here is a picture of it. Land...

Wednesday 10 th May Scarborough Josh and Andrew were catching up on sleep so I left the boat at 10am to find a laundrette and explore the local area. I started by climbing the hill up to the castle and from there you can see the extent of the town. It has two beaches on different sides of the headland, an old town centred around the castle, a new town down behind the castle and the harbour area. The “new” bit around the railway station is very Victorian with some large imposing hotels which have seen better days but must have been very grand in their time.    I found the launderette in the part of town behind the castle and had a coffee in the local pie shop while I was waiting for the washing cycle to finish. It was called Humble Pie and it made all it’s own pies as well as having a small café with home made cakes. The chef was chatting to customers about recently making a Pork Pie wedding cake ! On the walk back I visited St Mary's church, ...

Sunset from Lunar Sea's deck     Overnight sailing can be a magical experience and ours was, apart from the cold, it was zero degrees in the middle of the night! We had a hot supper of fish pie which raised our spirits and once darkness fell we had done a third of our journey. We were well wrapped up against the cold with many layers and hats and gloves. At night the rule is we always wear life jackets, so we duly put those on and proved it via pictures to Mike our safety man on shore who was monitoring our progress on the AIS system. Andrew in night sailing gear. Josh modelling the latest in night gear Me looking bemused.  Andrew and Josh were doing the watches through the night so I went to bed. It was difficult to sleep because the wind had picked up and it was “lumpy”. We sleep in the forward cabin at the bow so when you are in the cabin you can hear the water wooshing by the bow as the boat moves forward. Every bump up and down through the ...

Onwards and Upwards Well, welcome back, the last time I left you was about 6am in Southwold and I am now writing this in a hotel room in Hull. After being woken by the charming Dutchman at 5.30am we tied up and went back to bed. We woke to a lovely morning but a bit chilly and it was decision time. After the disasters we had experienced and the bad weather, was the trip jinxed and should we go back to Ramsgate and try again in perhaps a month’s time or even postpone the whole trip until next year? As you know we decided to carry on to Lowestoft at least and assess the situation there, so we made the two hour trip in not very pleasant conditions but at least the tide was with us and we got there quite quickly. The log entry shows two persons on board, Josh and Julia (under protest)! There was no room at the marina at the mouth of the River Orwell so we had to go up the river to Haven Marina, which meant waiting about half an hour for the bridge to open to let us through. W...

Well, in my last blog I promised a note on our onward voyage from Ipswich to Lowestoft. We set off from Neptune Marina at 8.20 am fully expecting to be in Lowestoft by 6pm if not before. How wrong can you be! The wind was a cold and steady 20 knots on the nose and although the tide was with us it was wind against tide so a very choppy sea. It wasn't nice. However I had made sandwiches for lunch and a flask of tea for me in case it wasn't possible to go below and boil a kettle. Things started to go wrong at 13.00 ...the engine stopped. Josh, being the marine engineer he is sorted it quite quickly and we were on our way again shortly, I wasn't too worried at this point. Twenty minutes later the engine stopped again...oh dear! Thirty minutes later it stopped again, oh dear double oh dear with knobs on!!. I was getting worried. The seas were still choppy and the wind remained a steady 20 to 24 knots and had not abated as had been forecast. (It will be alright the winds ...

Hello again, we ended up spending four nights in Ipswich so I thought I would tell you a bit about it. It has been a successful port since the 7th century, so there is a lot of maritime history, old buildings and pubs still around. The Nelson pub just off the waterfront is one as well as some old shops and merchants houses along Fore Street. The Buttermarket also has an ancient house built in the 1400's which Charles II visited in 1668 and has on its façade the four then known continents - Australia is not included as it had not been discovered then! Merchants house and then a pub behind the waterfront It remained very prosperous into the 19th century as can be seen by the grand Town hall and Post Office building in Cornhill. There are also twelve medieval churches in Ipswich. I did the Neptune Marina Historic Waterfront Trail which covered all the main buildings and businesses of old such as wine merchants Heyman, Barwell and Jones, Catchpoles Unicorn Brewery and the T...

Well, we are safely in Neptune's Marina in Ipswich. Firstly a huge thank you to everyone who came and waved us off at 10am on Monday as we started our journey, it was a cold and windy day so not very pleasant for onlookers and not particularly nice for us. On board we had Jo Lidstone and Jo Lidstone, Julia Lidstone and Josh Lidstone, all J Lidstones! To say it was not a pleasant voyage would be an understatement, it was horrid! I won't go on at lengths about the huge green seas, the 28...30...32...35 knots of wind, the cold, the rain etc etc as I expect Josh's blog will cover the technicalities. The worst was when we came out of the London Array windfarm into the Black Deep (yes really, look it up on the chart if you don't believe me.) It was grim and a little frightening at times. The boat was really rocking and rolling in huge seas and I could not hold on any longer, I had to steel myself and go below to the heads (the loo in other words for the landlubbers out ther...