Day62- Wednesday 19th July Breakout! Grimsby to Wells-next-the-Sea

This morning the four of us went our separate ways. Paul stayed put and Kelvin, Phil and I headed south. Kelvin and Phil were going for an overnighter to Lowestoft. I was headed for Wells on the north Norfolk coast .Phil went through the sea lock at 7ish. Kelvin and I waited until 9.3,0 so as not to have to fight the incoming tide coming as I moved down the Humber.

The winds don't seem to be doing what we expect them to. South westerlies were forecast, but light easterlies is what we found. However, the strong flow of water soon spat us out of the Humber as we left the distinctive tower in Grimsby and Spurn head behind us.Spurn Head is the only place in Britain where the lifeboatmen are on a permanent salary. Everywhere else they are volunteers. They live with their families on this remote spit of land that juts out into the Humber.

There is a strange vessel and piece of apparatus just inside the channel. When I came in a few days ago there was a long floating pipe leading from this yellow structure. Today there is a ship connected to it, with a tug keeping it in place. Whatever it is, it's not marked on the chart.

The forecast was for slow moving rain, which would be thundery at times. Given Paul's experience on the south coast, this was a cause for anxiety. Someone I had met suggested putting a chain over the side of the boat to act as a conductor. I found a piece of anchor chain and did just that.Other people have talked about putting your electrical components in an oven to act as a Faraday cage. Well I don't have an oven, so this is the best I can do.

There were some very heavy clouds hanging over Linconshire today, and  this bit of the County must have had a lot of rain, but fortunately I saw no lightening.It was another day for cloud watching and there were some crackers. This looked like a big pair of lips to me.

I had another go at taking a photo of the cobwebs. they are still there and didn't get blown away in Grimsby. I've enlarged it to help you see what look like film scratches.

A large yacht passed me with big yellow sails. What a great colour. Its so seldom you see something different form the ubiquitous white.

Navigation in these waters is about trying to find these things. They mark the shoals or the places where the water is shallow. This east marker buoy at Inner Dowsing is typical. It looks so big in the photo, but they can be surprisingly hard to spot sometimes.

When the clouds started to drift northwards the sun created shafts of light (corpuscular rays), which bright discs on the water.

Just as I started to make my approach to Wells I heard kelvin talking to Phil on the vhf radio. He had caught him up and was asking how he was. Phil had spent a lot of time motoring and was worried about running out of fuel. I joined the discussion and said I could give him some, if he could meet me in Wells. It was hard to keep in touch with him and I could not see him as I scanned the horizon with my binoculars.

As dusk fell the little wind there was died completely. This allowed some undisturbed bronze and pink reflections to colour the surface of the sea

The approach to Wells is tricky. Its a shallow narrow channel between sand bars and it twists and turns . Its well buoyed, but at dusk the doubling back and forth is difficult to follow. Either side of the channel, the waves were breaking in the gloom.I hoped Phil was either inside already or chose to stay at sea as it would be even worse in total darkness.