The half term school holiday week has come around thick and fast, however due to work commitments we were unable to take full advantage of it thus not setting off until Monday's pm tide.
ABP Humber recommend leisure craft to phone ahead giving at least 24 hours notice when transiting Goole Docks as per their website, which we duly did on the Sunday. Prior to departing our mooring at Goole Boathouse we called the Dock Master thinking we would have an easy transition being 1st pen, he disappointingly advised we may have to wait up to an hour as he had two ships to pen out! However, he quickly got back to us advising he would arrange for staff to meet us at Lowther Bridge and pen us through Victoria Lock. This lock is rarely used for pleasure craft, and the last time Peter used this lock was when we owned our Ocean 30 'Oceans Eleven' on his return trip from the Fens some 10 plus years ago.
Once departed from Victoria Lock we enjoyed a nice calm fast run to Hull Marina where we stayed for 2 nights. Upon arrival it was very nearly dark but we managed to plane even though we were struggling at this point with the light to see the light floats in the lower river.
We had an early 6am start on Wednesday morning. It was dark and misty as we departed Hull so we travelled at displacement speed. The whether conditions were once again calm and as the dawn broke and the mist lifted we were able to plane to Gainsborough on an impressively high Spring tide where we then dropped to displacement speed until we arrived at Torksey Lock.
After a much anticipated fish and chip lunch in Saxilby we trundled up the Fossdyke aka 'The Ditch' to the locals to the Woodcocks moorings outside of Burton Waters.
We spent the remainder of the week visiting the City of Lincoln where we stayed for 2 nights on the CRT visitor moorings. We had an enjoyable visit and met up with fellow boaters Naughty Cal before heading back down the cut and penning out of the lock to the bottom side of Torskey cut on Saturday afternoon.
At this stage we phoned Ocean Lock Goole advising we were heading down river the following day and would arrive near high water.
We departed Torksey cut 06.54 on Sunday in half light and thick fog. We thought the fog would have burnt off in the lower river to enable us to plane once we met the flood at Stockwith. However visibility did not improve and we felt it too risky to plane with the added danger of large pieces of driftwood. We found ourselves punching the flood to Grove Wharf, we then had help from the ebb to Apex Light but then it was a long slog to Goole against 4/5 knots of ebb.
We contacted Goole at Blacktoft Jetty, and were advised that we could not pay to pen in due to our late arrival as the Linesman had gone off duty (we do prefer to just hold station in the lower end of the lock rather than use ropes as this is much safer). This new procedure at Goole all stems from an incident earlier this year involving some York boats, which as regular users of Goole Docks we can't help but think that this has spoilt it for the locals who have transited the lock for many years without any problems. We therefore had no alternative but to anchor upstream of Goole and wait for the next tide.
We heaved the anchor at 19.30 in dense fog and proceeded back to Ocean Lock where we had a short wait for the Linesman to come back on duty. We finally landed back on our mooring at Goole Boathouse at 20.26.
Despite this we have had a nice relaxing week after having the last 3 weekends spoilt by unsociable working hours, which have resulted in us not being able to enjoy Moonshine. The only breakage this week being the hose pipe, but we can blame the impressive water pressure in Lincoln on that!
