Whitby

Scarborough was a real sea side resort. Ornate Victorian hotels, built on the cliffs above the beach, looked down with superior expressions at the holiday makers and the sea front, whilst their tired guest can make use of two "tramways" to lift them back to the hotels. The harbour was a bustle too, with the 707's making ready for their last race of the weekend, prior to the prize giving in one of the ornate hotels that evening.On the pontoon, I met two other boats "going round Britain". One, singlehanded by a dutchman, was converted from a 1930's ships liefboat and was about 5 metres long. He quite happily contemplated 3 week voyages to the Azores in his lifeboat. The secret was in the autopilot and the inboard engine that charge the batteries. The other, crewed by a Scots couple was en route to Edinburgh, having come up from Portugal. They had an elegant 26 footer of some sort with a lightweight wind steering vane. I can see a plan for Vagabond forming...

Seriously, I am rather worried about electrical power. Whilst the solar panels seem to keep the boat batteries charged adequately, they can't cope with the power requirements of the ipad or my phone, both of which play an increasing part in the navigation and wind forecasting of the voyages. It's OK when we can get into Marinas with electicity supplies but, once we get north of the Forth, these become few and far between......



The Red Arrows leave a smoke trail against the clouds



Meanwhile, back to Scarborough. Saturday was their "Armed Forces day". There were a scattering of real military people about, demonstarting field cooking skills and their other, more lethal (?) hardware. There were also many groups of enthusiasts with older equipment...... There was due to be a display of the Red Arrows later on and then a fly past of the RAF Battle of Britain squadron. But we couldn't wait, the tide called.

So, by about midday, Vagabond nosed out of the harbour and the sails were hoisted. The wind had gone back to North overnight and was forecast to go west later on. So we tacked northward again, watching astern the antics of the racing fleet.

After a couple of hours, I happended to look behind us and saw the Red Arrows at work, leaving pretty patterns of smoke trail amongst the broken cloud.

The tide turned and helped us on. The tides are less this week because it's getting on towards neap tides and there generally is less tidal current on this part of the coast than there was further south.

Then, on looking forward, I could see the last headland before the coast turned a little to the West at Whitby. Flying along the cliffs was the Lancaster from the RAF B o B flight. He'd lost his escort for the moment.

The wind died. On came Freddy and we motored on towards Whitby, into the imposing breakwater system guarding the river mouth.


The imposing breakwaters


It was low water, so I prudently raised the centre board to about half way, to reduce our draft.  The swell was still running from the north east and we surfed in through the entrance as I anxiously watched the depth sounder dial..... it was almost touch and go, so I was pleased to have raised the board but we were successfully over the shallow bit and then, as regular readers will know, we had to wait for the swing bridge to open.


We then followed the fleet into the Marina,

Following into the Marina

We're now getting ready to go on to Hartlepool, before the next near gale engulfs us tomorrow....