Tidal trip to Hull Fair

 Yesterday morning gave us a very foggy start at Goole, as we wanted to go to Hull for the Hull Fair weekend. 4 boats from SYBC arrived at Goole on Friday evening with the intention of visiting Hull also, however due to the fog conditions they decided to cancel and some returned back to base. One of the boats in question did not have a working stern light, and it is essential to have a good set of nav lights when navigating in either these conditions or indeed in the dark. 

We decided we would continue with the trip, and entered Ocean Lock with 4 boats from York. Then visibility deteriorated further. Once we had left the lock for the river it was very dense fog, and we had to keep to the east side close in to avoid 2 inward ships. We travelled together at slow speed fighting a very fierce spring tide until the fog eventually cleared at Reedness, we then all planed at 25 knots to Hull. A typical fast journey for Moonshine from Goole to Hull would normally take 1 hour, but yesterday took us 1hr 45mins. 

Once moored up in Hull Marina glorious sunshine greeted us, and we spent the day shopping and visited the Ice Arena with the kids.

Sunday morning was a repeat performance with the fog, with the sun peaking through but giving us false hopes of a clearance. The boats from York with whom we had travelled with the day before wanted us to guide the way again back up river. The fog was so dense in places and there must only have been between 15 to 20 meters visibility. At one point the last 2 boats had become separated and were panicking on the radio asking we all cut engines so they could hear our horns to locate us. We eased back to tick over speed to maintain a constant heading and still leave a wake trail. It would have been stupidity to have cut engines with no visibility! They eventually caught up, and after much deliberation they decided to continue to Goole to leave their boats for the working week. We however, had already made the decision to head for the safe haven of the Trent Anchorage until the next tide, as we were too late for a free pen in at Goole and didn't want to pay £49 per vessel. Unfortunately the dogs will have to cross their legs or pay the puppy pad a visit. 

All in all it has been a good weekend and a good test for the radar, chart plotter, autopilot and anchor winch under very testing conditions.