Windy you bet it was!, anyway we left the mariner at about 11am sat,a strong breeze blew us out of our berth backwards, but controllable, we then crabbed our way round the sharp turns of st olaves ,and out onto the main river..plenty of power needed as head wind and tide against pushed tide upto the new cut then bliss wind and tide following all the way down the cut 1000 revs and 6.4 mph with no wash!.This soon turned into 3.2 mph at the top of the cut approaching Readham bridge.Lots of radio messages from a armarder of boats on route from Brundle to Outon broad ,though the bridge ,very strong current and lots of boats moored with lowered radar arches on the key waiting.Saw Hockam admiral moored and gave him a wave on way past,then past the ferry and out into the wilds of the Yare,grand daughter(10) at the helm under instruction,she couldn,t quite get the hang of the now very blustery wind ,so earned the nickname "snake wash" .Met Baz on his way to wrc and gave him a wave,made good time upto Coldham Hall,our intended destination ,but they were closed from 3pm for a private funtion(guessing a wedding) so it was plan b, we motored up to the ferry house but were confronted with the dreaded blackboards!the broom owners club had reserved 5 moorings and another group of 4 had reserved 4 ,the only space was to moor stern on right on the Norwich end...well after 5 atempts and a new pair of pants ,we got the boat in by holding her bow into wind and flow of river,which was flowing down stream! and hovering until i could get one corner near enough the quay for Sue to get a rope ashore then roped her in.Then the Brooms started to arrive...never heard so many bow and stern thrusters!! it was very difficult for them been tall boats! they eventually ended up side on double rafted, with one owner giving up in a smoke screen of Perkins smoke!and heading off down river.We were then joined by Wombat and jeff on thier boats ,who we roped in as there even lighter than the Leg and Chew!, a good night followed in the Ferry ,and Sonia didn,t let us down with her portions!
Sunday morning saw us letting go after breakfast ,the tide was with is but it was still breezy,called in to Brooms for Diesel as running on empty!(wallet screaming),a nice cruise down the river with the tide ,very sunny so lovely and warm under the canopy.Coming past reedham rangers hut we were suddenly hailed on a loud hailer by the ranger ,(was i speeding?..no few)to inform us ther e was a barge obstructing the bridge and to take care...which we did and got though .Turning into the new cut we were suprised at the lack of water it was very shallow,we got to the other end of the new cut to be confronted with a floatiller of large boats(about 9 or 10) they were very kind and waited until we got past the narrow part under the bridge as there some very large boats in the party..a 46 no less!.We then turn into st olaves as normal...and misjudged the wind and tide and ended up in the reeds! lee shores are not the best to get off but we managed in the end, in the mariner there wasn,t a lot of water either we were churning up the mud in places,we moored up with the help of Charlie who always seems to be ready to meet boats on our pontoon in the wind.
Heck i ve gone on a bit!!