After waiting for the tide to rise sufficiently to lift the boats from the mud and to give enough clearance to get into the deeper water of the harbour we set of heading South, well SSE. What was imediately obvious was the coast had suddenly changed from high cliffs and hills to a very much lower lying landscape and sandy beaches.
There was very little to take photos of so we plodded on into the very slight breeze dead on the nose yet again. The breeze did pick up a bit later, but still dead against us. We gradually got closer to Spurn Head and started wondering if there would be enough shelter wit the wind in this direction to anchor.
I had set off a little nervous about my repaired autopilot, so had the backup ancient AP sitting ready to connect if necessary. The main one behaved impeccably and is working a lot smother and quieter. My split pin bodge seems to be working and the grease was obviously necessary.
Spurn Head has a shallow spit extending Eastward, so we picked our way through the deeper channels. The Humber is different from the Medway in that they expect all vessels including leisure to contact them on entry or exit. We were lucky and allowed to enter the river straight away keeping close to the steeply shelving Spurn Head. A motor boat a little after us was made to wait some time as several large commercial vessels were leaving.
Once round the head we turned into the anchorage that turned out to be well sheltered from the swell coming into the river from the breeze.Being shallow draft we were abe to creep even further in than the one other anchored larger yacht. The anchor grabbed the mud imediately and didnt budge when I applied a little reverse power to set it. Although out of the swell from the sea, we weren’t out of the wake from the passing commercial vessels and bounced about quite a bit.
A quick discussion between the two boats and we realised that an early start was required to get to Wells Next the Sea near HW. 05.00 was our agreed start.
