Monday, 13 November 2017

Up In The Air



Our plans for a trip to Hull this weekend were a bit up in the air at first, due to the forecast low pressure bringing strong winds for Saturday and Sunday. As the weekend approached the wind was forecast to be quite light on the Saturday but very windy come Sunday. 
We decided to brave the cold northerly wind and had a very pleasant fast run down, accompanied by another Goole boat ‘Lady Izzy’ arriving at Hull around lunch time. 
After an afternoon of shopping with the kids, whilst Peter tended to his boat checks and took the hounds for a long walk along the river, we were looking forward to an evening meal out. What we didn’t expect was the volume of visitors to Hull to see a City of Culture parade in the early evening, and people queuing out of the door at every food emporium! We then had to make an executive decision to get some food and eat on the boat, with a stroppy teenager in tow. A few pizzas and a bag of chips were quickly grabbed from the trusty Heron Foods store and said pizzas were chucked in the oven, and it gave us a great opportunity to use the cheap B&M air fryer bought a few weeks ago in Newark. It was the best meal we have had in a long time...well anything would be when you are ravenous! 
As predicted on the Sunday the wind had gotten up after dawn, and was blowing NW 6 when we left Hull. We had another two crew on Moonshine on the return trip, Keith and Mary from ‘Mar y sol’ who had crewed for ‘Lady Izzy’ on the way down, which is getting lifted out at Hull for her annual maintenance.
We decided to take the north channel so as to get a lee from the shore. It was quite rough from Hull to the bridge, and as it was calmer in the north channel we planed until cutting across to the main channel where we slowed as it was quite rough and then carried on at displacement speed until Apex Light, then again planing until Old Goole. We had a short wait to pen into Ocean Lock, and with the northerly wind over tide the waves were quite impressive in Goole Reach. 
Due to work and other commitments this will be our last tidal trip for awhile, but will give us chance to catch up on servicing maintenance jobs.