I finally managed to get away from Cranfield and into Suffolk to make some finishing touches to the seaworthiness of my little boat.  The annual Lowestoft Air Display was viewed from on board but within the confines of the Trawl Dock owing to the very lumpy seas.  The highlight for me was the Vulcan bomber and it brought back many memories from the sixties when I used to visit the RAF Church Fenton Air Display with my dad.  The Red’s were truly brilliant and it was a pleasant surprise as I had got to the point a few years ago where I thought they were fading a little.

Voyage part 1 got us to Brightlingsea and back via Shotley, Ipswich Neptune Marina , Woolverstone and Titchmarsh.

Voyage part 2 got us to Ramsgate and back via Ipswich Haven Marina and meant a couple of night passages leaving at 2:30 am to catch the right tidal flows.  At Ramsgate we were there for the period of really high pressure 1038 milliBars that brought fine sunny days but no favourable winds to speak of.  The return was a direct passage of 12.5 hours arriving in Lowestoft for the 3 am bridge.  While waiting for the bridge to open we got a rope round the propeller and had to have the boat lifted out a couple of days later in order to free it.  We got back before the gales but were ready to start again but the season is over and summer never did really arrive for more than a few days at a time.

Before returning home we ventured out to the wind farm on Scroby Sands and spotted to porpoises but they were pretty elusive when it came to posing for the camera - still fins and a blowhole at least shows we saw more than the customary gulls and seals.  The highlight was probably star-gazing during the calmer part of the trip back from Ramsgate and watching the luminous glow from the microscopic sea creatures - I am not sure yet what exactly they were but every time a part of our bow wave broke and disturbed them they gave off many flashes of light that was still visible in our wake.   “There is  a vast range of single-celled plankton, zoo and gelatinous plankton that are bioluminescent. The ‘sparks’ flying off the bow wave was most probably from plankton such as copeopods or dinoflagellates. The glowing ‘trails’ in the wake being from billions of scared, hungry or over-sexed plankton”, according to Richard Birdsey of New South Wales Sea Kayak Club.

Anyway, it is October 7^th now and my savings at Icesave are under threat as they have stopped trading so I will be flying again tomorrow and back to some form of normality trying to ignore thinking about the credit crunch or the banking fiasco that has finally topped off my longed for summer break!