The people at Hoo marina were very helpful & sad to see Leander leave; her previous owner was well known & had sadly passed away only a few weeks before. Tim had the task of steering away from the moorings, as he had asked the locals for directions so, no point going over it all again with myself. Once out in the Medway, the girls decided to send pictures of their full English breakfast, just as we tucked into our pork pies!

We had to head against the tide & this would be all the way out to the estuary, passing Kings North Power Station & rounding the meandering bends. Everything was fine, until we ventured out into the Thames estuary, just as the tide was beginning to turn & against the wind. In stead of heading down the estuary, we had to tack our way across, due to meeting white water waves, hitting us broadside on. By the time the waves had calmed, we found ourselves off Southend pier head, rather than the preferred Thorpe Bay. At least by now, the tide would be helping us on our way & we began to make good time. Although we knew in our minds that reaching Haven Gore Bridge in time was a definite no no, it was still disappointing when the realisation set in that we would have to go the long way around & a long way it turned out to be!

When on land & looking out to sea, the low tide marks look a long way off however, when looking from the sea back to land, the distances are immense. We were using three methods of navigation, charts, gps plotter & depth sounder & even then, we encountered problems with the channel marker buoys, Buxey in particular, as this needs to be replaced due to shifting sands, not just by a few yards, we ended up having to do a three mile detour to get around the Maplin Sands, not much fun when the boat was only doing 4mph! By the time we were able to turn towards the mouth of the Crouch, we were not far off the wind farm out from Clacton!

The next three & a half hours would be the longest known & we were just glad that the weather had been really kind to us for the majority of the passage. Heading against the tide, we helped the inboard engine by starting up my ten horse Johnson & even with both engines, we still only able to reach the heady heights of 4mph. Just when the tide began to ease off & I had thought of turning off the Johnson, it gave up, bellowing out an acrid smelling aroma. I'm still hoping it was the spark plugs that gave out, still to be investigated.

We arrived back at Essex Marina at about 8.30pm, ten hours after departing Hoo, tired but, satisfied that we had done something not many people had/would achieve in such a small, aged boat.