A Week in the Life...

[CooWee]

Last bit, phew.  I somehow erased this and had to start again, so glad to put it to bed.  I was going to put the last song as The Doors "The End", fortunately I checked and whilst it is an abridged version, it is not entirely abridged and not for a family forum.

 

 

 

Day 5, Wednesday, 21 August, 2013.

 

Met Inky(NBF) this morning, nice guy, showed him around Moonlight Shadow or rather Lisa did, I was doing waste disposal in every sense!  This morning’s breakfast will be mushrooms on toast, washed with the usual Broads coffee, hick!  Filled up with water rather slowwwly and made ready to depart our mooring.

                We departed our mooring at 1030 after saying our goodbyes.  The guy next door had a rather impressive inflatable canoe, looked the dog’s bo***cks, more than just a toy, the previous day his wife and he had gone off canoeing for a couple of hours.  The company that makes this inflatable can be found on www.seaeagle.com ; if anyone is interested, not cheap, but looked very well made.  We carried on down the River Waveney on another pleasant day.  I don’t think we actually went with the tide at any point during this week, we travelled on slack water at times, but the fuel wasn’t too bad, just over £60 including a pump out.  There were a fair number of yachties about, doing a bit of racing, but avoiding them wasn’t too taxing.  It was somewhere along here the that I made the comment that ‘I’m not going inside anymore buoys’, in truth I hadn’t actually realised what I had said until an elbow arrived in my ribs, but I had made out that I intended the comment and the nose grew another inch!  Another half an hours cruising and the Waveney River Centre hove into view , and I tripped over my tongue and it is now the Wiveney Raver Centre, I am going to have look into how much Rum her ladyship puts into these coffees!

                We decided we were going to moor up at Somerleyton, since we never had moored there before.  We would normally have gone to Oulton Yacht Station, but we had heard from BYS that all the moorings were taken so we were giving it a miss this trip.  Moving on, it was still a really, really nice day and was a theme for the whole week it was a pleasure to be cruising, I think everyone’s spirits were up, everyone seemed cheerful, lots of waving, enthusiastic waving too, plenty of morning, lovely day type comments.  Ferry Marine seemed to have their whole fleet way down south, it was almost like every other boat was a Ferry Marine craft.  In fact our first visit to Geldeston on our second trip to the Broads was on ‘Opal Emblem’ a Ferry Marine cruiser.  We arrived at Somerleyton and moored without any drama, unusual really.

                I haven’t mentioned this before, but we were having trouble with our leisure batteries and they weren’t holding a charge.  The problem occurred the week previously and a cable was repaired but it turns out that wasn’t the problem and we were having to run the engine for about thirty minutes a time to pump water and whathaveyou.  Sorry everyone but we were having technical problems.  We eventually decided that we would head back to Brundall on Thursday and give the engineers a chance to repair MS for the next couple.  During the course of the day a couple arrived in a Barnes Brinkcraft and made a bit of a mess of mooring, people were preparing to help but the chap was embarrassed and went off.  Shame, all but the most expert of us often make errors of judgement, ‘I know I do,’ so if he reads this I hope he doesn’t give up on the Broads.

 

 

 

Day 6, Thursday, 22^nd August, 2013.

 

Today is the 528^th anniversary of the Battle of Bosworth, in case you’re interested.

 

I am running out of writers steam now and I forgot to write this day up, but we set off for Broom and Brundall at around 1030 after Breakfast and guess what, yeees a Broads coffee.  I seem to remember the day started off cloudy and windy, making it tricky to get off the mooring.  I was concerned about being driven into the cruiser moored in front of us.  We should have sprung MS off, but couldn’t be bothered, we squeaked off okay in the end.  I had thoughts of going for a trip around Breydon, but St Olaves was reading 7’ 4”, no chance, so down the cut we went, a bit tedious but it serves a purpose.  On and on passed all the familiar landmarks towards Brundall and Broom eventually hove into view and we stopped off for the fuel and the pump out and then moored up.  We had already rung Broom about our problem and they would look it on Friday.  Another note to self, we must one day go to Surlingham Broad, it is only across the river and we still haven’t been to it.

 

Day 7, Friday, 23^rd August, 2013.

The day dawned bright and sunny and we were going to drive down to Oulton Broad and after breakfast and the usual we duly did.  Seems strange arriving by car, we parked up by the Yacht Station and I attended to some urgent business due to the diuretic tablets I am taking, met Sarah again with some of the lads!  They have a nice new shower in there now along with some other refurbishment.  We watched some yacht racing and very colourful it was too, we stayed in the park for about an hour and then went to Jeckells, Lisa was looking for a clock for MS, but couldn’t find one the right size we then went to The Bitch in the Ditch initially for a bite to eat but the kitchens weren’t open, saw the gaffer saying his prayers with a pint in front of him, said hello to Richard and sat down for a quick drink ourselves.  We then had fish and chips and I had Plaice which I haven’t had for years, I’ll stick to my Haddock I think, ‘had a cold Haddock, Woolly Bully’, cannot think of the proper words now.  We had a drive around Lowestoft and I just didn’t recognize the place, I stayed there with a pal at my aunt’s guest house, something around 1965, and on one of the days took a couple of girls back.  The following day at breakfast I got a real ear bending, something like, ‘don’t you bring girls back here, I have a reputation to consider.’  I don’t think I ever saw her again.  Any road up, after the drive around Lowestoft we headed back to Brundall to find two new leisure batteries had been fitted. 

The following day Lisa cleaned the boat, I carted everything back to the car, we seem to have developed a system that works, considering our various difficulties, mostly me it has to be said.

 

We agreed that this was one of the nicest weeks that we have had on the Broads, the good weather obviously helped, loads of friendly people certainly did, It was the sort of week that when it ends you look forward to going back.  Moonlight Shadow has been re-upholstered and looked spiffing and another addition is a smoke alarm, which was added when we told the syndicate of what happened on Malanka.  I am back in October, Lisa’s operation permitting, and then we have another week in November.  I hope who ever is reading this is still awake, reading through it myself, my writing is not really good enough to convey what a good week it was.  Tarra, hope you like the songs.