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Day three. Monday 30 July 2001.

Everything is still going well, although there is no phone connection out here, and so all these emails, notes and the log are backing up, waiting to be uploaded.

Yesterday we tried to divert to Great Yarmouth to get more diesel. We had used one third of our 180 litres doing two days passage, and Maggie and I thought it prudent to forego our Ocean Yachtmaster passage (600 miles non stop), in order to ensure that we did not run short of the smelly stuff.

So after flying the spinnaker for the first time for about an hour, we turned to port and plotted a passage plan over some tricky shallows and tried to make sense of contradictory information in the North Sea pilotage book and the 2001 Almanac and the charts that we have of this bit of the coast. An hour and a half into the diversion to Great Yarmouth, we finally got Mobile Phone connection, and I tried the telephone number listed for the diesel at Great Yarmouth. No answer. After a bit, I tried phoning the Port authority, and got someone’s home number, even though the number was correct. The North Sea Pilot book looks like it is not to be believed. I phoned the number in the Almanac and they gave me the diesel mans home number. Well to cut a long story short, Great Yarmouth appears not to sell diesel on a Sunday, and so we turned North East again and headed back to our original course.

As it has turned out, the wind has picked up and apart from a six hour motor last night, we have been able to turn the engine off and use the Main, Genoa and for a while again yesterday, the new Spinnaker.

The first flight of the kite was fantastic. It is a beautiful sail, thanks Richard at North Sails, it is a fantastic sight. We launched it without any problems and flew along at 7.5 knots until we had to make our diversion to Great Yarmouth. Later in the afternoon, we tried to fly it again. The wind was a bit flukey, and the sea a bit rougher. The first launch was aborted. We then tried the pole on the other side, but that was worse, and obviously wrong. So back to the pole on the Starboard side, and this time the launch went ok. It was very difficult to keep course, and John turned off the Autohelm, and tried to manually helm. It was very difficult, with the spinnaker and swell rolling Debanessa from one side to the other. After about an hour and a half, we snuffed it and put all the toys away.

It was time for supper.

One last use for the pole though, we polled out the Genoa, and went gull winged. Much more stable, and the Autohelm coped fine. The polled out Genoa is very stable.

Supper was curry and rice, with salad, and Tarryn made a chocolate “Angels Delight” pudding.

In the evening we came across the gas fields off Dogger Bank. All the platforms flash Morse U (isolated danger), dot dot dash. And there are loads of them. You have to keep 500m clear of them, and avoid other traffic avoiding the platforms at the same time. Spectacular sight, all lit up, flashing D and some sounding deep eyrie Morse D horns as well.

This morning we were clear of most of them, and the wind returned a bit (7-9 NW). We are close-hauled/beam reached getting about 3-5 knots out of the full genoa and main. I am getting much better at sail trim and can normally get us another half a knot every half hour as I retrim the sails.

It has all gone cloudy and I just managed to get in a sun sight before we lost it completely. So it may be a long run before I can do another sight for my sun-run-run Ocean Yachtmaster “exam”. The spray hood is up to keep the much cooler wind off while we keep watch, not that we have seen anything in the last three hours, apart from the last platform for a while.

We are now off the charts which we have, being about 60 miles off shore and our charts concentrating on the coast. We still have our large number 2 chart of the UK, and there is no danger here apart from other vessels which are of course not charted anyway. At the moment we are about six hours ahead of our ETA, even with the aborted diversion into Great Yarmouth.

We have about half a tank of diesel, and the wind looks like it might do the trick for us, so unless it dies off totally we may not have to divert anywhere else for diesel. If we were to divert, it would probably be further north, as any diversion now will see us having to divert 50 miles inshore which will be a bit counter productive.

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