Anyway, we motored for about ten minutes while the sails were hoisted, then began sailing. We had, for much of the voyage, the wind behind us. Bermudan sloop rigged boats (most yachts, Isabella included, are "bermudan sloops") aren't the best at running before the wind (aka "downwind" sailing). Generally, you either launch a spinnaker (a special type of sail for going downwind or near downwind) or "goose wing" (putting one sail out one side of the boat, and the other out the other side). As it was gusty, and as we've never had any success with our spinnaker anyway, we goose winged. Problem we had though was that the wind changed direction a little, quite often, making the boom violently slam across from one side to the other - so after a little while we furled the jib (sail at front of boat) and sailed using only the main sail (the one attached directly to the mast/boom). This worked surprisingly well, and with the now increasing tidal assist we were hurtling along at 6 knots over the ground.
We became aware that a number of other yachts were headed the same way as us. Most of them were goose winged and none of them seemed to be struggling with it. They'd used a pole to hold their sails in the correct place - something we could have done, on reflection. As they didn't seem to be catching us up we just carried on as we were.
It was at about this point that we noticed a large number of wind turbines on the horizon. These were not marked on our 2008 chart* and so must have been very new indeed. It was obvious that they were either on our planned route, or _just_ beyond it.
One of the other yachts heading our way suddenly started to make ground on us - then overtook us. As they were passing I noticed their engine was running. They shouted over that they were motor sailing because they were concerned about crossing "The Spitway" (the shallows I mentioned earlier) at low water. They also confirmed that the turbines were not going to be a problem - they were further away than they looked (they must be HUGE!).
We started motoring.
As the day had been panning out it was obvious that the weather at sea was somewhat preferable to that over the land, but shortly after we started motoring, some of the land weather started to come out to meet us. It was a massive, slow moving squall. By this point we were under full sail (while motoring) as the wind was a better direction, and I correctly predicted that the squall would be accompanied by an increase in wind speed, so my rapidly reefed (reduced size) sails were perfect for the strong winds (20 to 25 knots) we encountered imminently.
We rounded a green buoy and began to head West to Brightlingsea, this brought the strong winds onto the beam (side of the boat) and we accelerated towards our destination while the rain increased and visibilty dropped to about 2 miles. The other yachts had now caught up with us and as a group we shot across the sea in torrential rain - it was absolutely fantastic! When the rain reduced I took some photos of another boat - they grinned like naughty schoolkids. Everyone was loving it.
The wind died off a little by the time we got to the shallows and we crossed without incident - noticing a depth as low as of 2.6m at one point. Not a lot of water under the 1.5m keel then, especially considering we were far enough out to sea that we could see no land!
The wind continued to drop and everyone (now 3 yachts including us as 2 had headed off to Burnham on Crouch) was motor sailing again, us slightly in the lead (not sure they knew it was a race haha). Then the wind picked up from very little to about 20 knots and stayed there. We were back to full sail by this point but Isabella seemed to be fine so we kept all the sail up, killed the engine and accelerated towards our destination. The auto-helm couldn't cope very well with this so I took over the helm and we pulled further and further away from the other yachts.
We crossed the finish line way out in front while Rose noticed that there was a nice anchorage right where we were - so after 2 mins getting the sails in we dropped anchor just to the east of Mersea Island and celebrated our victory!
* Marine charts have their issue date clearly marked on them. One is supposed to regularly check the "notices to mariners" for the charts they have, and update them accordingly in order to ensure they are fully up to date. In practice however this is extremely time consuming as every minor change to this or that is included in the notices. There can be 100's of small changes just on a single chart in a few years. Because of this, most leisure water users do not always update their charts. The general unspoken (well, spoken quietly when nobody is about) feeling is that "rocks do not move". This is to some extent very true, and things that do change are often marked with very handy navigation buoys. And there's some that argue that to blindly assume that your completely up to date charts are totally without error is extremely dangerous. But the wind turbines we encountered (and the change of the sand banks at Exmouth) are a scary reminder that rocks may not move, but other things, as dangerous as rocks, do
Here's some stats:
Motored: 48 hours 13 minutes
Sailed: 65 hours 29 minutes
Anchored: 30 nights
Marina: 43 nights
Other: 43 nights (swinging moorings, pontoons, quays etc)
Mooring Fees: £1333 (almost doubled due to nearly £600 of fees in London!)
Logged: 511.4 nautical miles
BBQ: 16
Fish: 5 caught (need to work on this!)
Here's some pics:
Goose Winged Yachts follow us to Brightlingsea
Yacht overtakes us in the aftermath of the squall
Under full sail, no land in sight, depth on the guage showing 2.7m!
At anchor in the river Colne
At anchor in the river Colne
Ashore on Mersea Island
