Noah, Harry, Peter and Toby departed Aldeburgh at 0530, with a decent sized crowd to wave us off. We made steady progress down river, cruising at 7 knots. Leaving the mouth, we had 15 knots blowing abeam, this made for a slightly lumpy crossing, but nothing major. We had our first technical fault, when the autopilot wouldn't steer an accurate course. We had been warned this may happen due to new bugs in the pilots software, so we just steered by course instead of waypoints. The entrance to Ostend was fairly rough, but once we made it into the harbour, conditions smoothed. Noah took the helm as we nosed into the Royal North Sea Yacht Club. The harbour was fairly packed, we had to raft up next to a Belgium boat, with a rouge dutchman trying to get in our way,
Once we had settled at our berth we made are way to a lovely bar in the sunshine to celebrate a successful first leg. After two small beers we wandered back towards the boat, all a bit weary and found a nice restaurant for supper. Toby and Harry had moules, Noah Chateaubriand (of course) and Peter had scampi - one bottle of white wine between the three of us! Early night, all slept well and in good spirits today! Sunny morning but raining like mad now!
Tomorrow, early start and off to Hartlepool - will we have enough diesel to get there...
by Harry & Noah