Our Southwold Cruise was once again hampered by weather. This time it was the forecast rather than the actual weather that followed that caused us to vary our plans as for 3 days on the trot, the forecast promised Easterly winds which didn’t transpire.
16 boats gathered at Berney Arms for a Skippers Briefing at 0800hrs. Given the forecast, we made plans to go into Lowestoft giving us an inland route back if conditions were not favourable at sea. We had 8 novice crews going to sea for the first time, we are always careful to ensure that our novice members are not put through an off putting experience in unpleasant conditions.
We set off for our 0915hrs Haven Bridge lift in lovely warm sunshine and headed down the coast with flat calm conditions. We ran at 8 knots to accommodate some displacement boats and those with faster boats had the opportunity to open up and try them out, all with the back up and support of our support boats and RIB.
Having posed for photographs from our official cruise photographer Denise, we headed into Lowestoft Hamilton Dock at around 1130hrs.
The crews relaxed in the sunshine before a social gathering on Evita at 1600hrs.
Later we were collected by minibus and taken to the RN&SYC for dinner.
The following morning with Easterly F4-5 still in the forecast for Monday, we took the decision to head back to Great Yarmouth whilst the sea state was still great. This time we headed south, first down the Stanford channel and up the outside of the Holm Send before heading back into Great Yarmouth.
We returned to the Broads very happy and very suntanned.
