If It's Good Enough for The Owl and The Pussycat.....

Bertie didn’t make it.  He passed away just shortly after my last entry, most likely from exhaustion and shock, from being in the river.  We were much more upset than two grown ups should be and both cried like babies before burying him under a tree on the embankment, we’d grown so attached to the wee soul and had hoped to happily send him off home at some point.  It felt wrong that he never made it home to his loft…..  We then made our way somberley along the five miles of river that would take us to the Dog in a Doublet Lock, where we’d spend the night to head out to Wisbech in the morning.  However, a phonecall from Daryl the pilot changed plans again.  The weather was too bad for any crossing on Saturday, so he would bring the six boats waiting at Boston over on Sunday and then take us over on Monday.  This meant instead of going to Wisbech on Friday and waiting til’ Monday, we could just go back to Peterborough and go through the Dog lock (getting fed up typing Dog in a Doublet everytime…) on Sunday morning.  We stayed at the Dog overnight and got up early to catch the lock-keeper and update him.  There were another two boats going through on Sunday, so he said just to be there for about 9.30am.  We then headed back into Peterborough for the next two nights.

 

All quiet back at Peterborough Embankment

Swans at Sunset

An early start on Sunday to get to the dog on time and we were off to Wisbech (pronounced Wisbeech).  We were cruising along on the tide quite nicely, ‘til we realised we were at the half-way mark after about an hour – the total journey should take about three to four……  We pulled back the revs but the tide was picking up and it began to feel like driving on ice……  At Wisbech, we had to go past the yacht harbour and make a ‘U’ turn to come back up to the harbour against the tide, to moor up.  This is not an easy feat in a 57 foot narrowboat, but we’d been warned and experienced similar last year going off and on the Ouse at Selby on our way to York.  So we were fairly calm as we were swept sideways out to sea a few yards whilst making the turn to come back up.  We were very pleased to get onto the floating pontoon as we’ve never seen such fast moving water on our travels.  We had a wander round Wisbech, only to discover the town was having ‘Wis-beach Day’, complete with donkey rides!  We then had tea and settled down for the evening bracing ourselves for our trip across the Wash the next morning.

 

Our mooring at Wisbech Yacht Harbour - at low tide, check out the watermark.

Mike wasn't allowed a ride on Mike's Donkeys.....

Our mooring now at high tide, now level with the blue fence - so much more attractive

The next morning (Monday) we were on!  Daryl arrived at 8am, did an inspection of our boat, asked if our front windows were double-glazed.  Errr… no.  Why??  It was borderline conditions, just on the limit for taking us over, so we would set off but Daryl warned us we might need to turn back if the wind got too strong.  I am now going to let the pictures do the talking, as there are tons.  But can I just say, “NEVER AGAIN!”

Coming out of Wisbech we had to wait for the tug to bring this commercial ship up to its mooring.  We were happy to wait til it was safely moored up.

Sutton Swing bridge

Is that thar sea, I see ahead????

And where there's sea there's seals!!  The Wash is home to one of the largest populations of gray seal.

Thankfully there are a few of these marking the channel as I have no idea where we're going......

Fisheries Research vessel keeping an eye on things

Wooooops!!!!!!! That's a big one!!!  (And there were quite a few like this!)

I really did not enjoy the frothy bits

Okay, so green is port, red is starboar - red and white??  Anyone???

Not at my most relaxed to be honest.....

Yacht came alongside as they thought they'd seen us going the other way a month earlier

Mike and Daryl the pilot - both very relaxed.  I was down below trying to get my fingernails out of the palm of my hand.....

The Boston stump (the church tower) can be seen from quite a distance.  Oh how I wanted to be there.

You have to wait for the tide to turn, to take you into Boston, which means two hours kicking your heels.  Normally you beach up on a sandbank and can make sandcastles and have a bar-b-que, however, it was too windy to do that with us, so we had to drop anchor....  We've never dropped anchor before as it's only really for emergencies, so it felt incredibly weird being anchored up.  Especially as when the wind blew us away from the anchor, the boat rolled to one side... I didn't like being anchored up.

Quaintrelle didn't like being anchored up either, especially when we had difficulty getting the anchor up.  At one point the anchor ended up under the boat and the boat was pulled over to one side by what felt like 45 degrees.  Plates fell out the rack, the settee shot across to the other side of the cabin and everything fell out of the bathroom cupboards.  I was very brave and didn't cry.

Shelter in the appropriately named 'Haven', the stretch of water leading us up into Boston

Slightly more relaxed now....

Until Daryl made me sit on a sandbank!  We were a bit early coming in and the tide wasn't high enough, so we had to beach ourselves for 20 minutes or so.  Another very strange sensation as we actively avoid running aground under normal circumstances as it makes the boat roll around, however, she sat very steadily here.

Boat graveyard on the outskirst of Boston - see how close we are getting to the stump.

Hovering whilst the lock is set for us with the magnificent stump in the background

One of Dave's pics from the bridge at the lock - we look very small!!

There was a welcoming committee watching us come in on the green light from the lockie.  One was Dave, our mate, and the rest were the boaters from the six boats who had been waiting a week for the right weather to cross.  I said it would be best if they didn't ask me how it went.....

The relief I felt at reaching that lock was like nothing I'd felt before, I was just managing to keep tears down. It was an experience, but I was nervous the whole way over and I will not take Quaintrelle across the Wash again.  I think the way I felt is because it was our home we were taking over this fairly hostile water, if we lost her, we lost everything we own (except what's in my mum's garage, but we can't be wearing our ski gear permanently...).  That was quite a big responsibility and I felt on edge the whole time.  I also wish we'd had other boats with us, tho' we suspect if there had been a convoy we would not have crossed that day.  It was fine with just one boat, as Daryl was with us, but he probably wouldn't have taken a group over in these conditions.  It would have been nice to have shared it with others.  Or done it in someone else's boat!!