FIRST SOLO OVERNIGHT PASSAGE COMPLETED!!!

I'd never actually done a whole overnight trip completely singlehanded untill last night, and apart from the busy shipping and ferrys coming into the Humber, it was really nice!

After a nice, dry, calm night, we left on Monday morning at about 2:45am with heavy rain, thick clowd coverage (no moon for light) and it was still pitch black. We strapped the boats together and used them as twin engines to manouvre out of our berth. This sounds really scary, but with one engine in astern (reverse) and the other ahead, its a very controlled turning methord, and worked brilliantly.

Of course, as you leave the lights of the pontoon behind you, EVERYTHING is the same shade of black, making navigation even trickier. I was extremely thankfull to have a chartplotter, which can tell you that your actually looking at the wrong red buoy, or that you are infact aiming for a sand bank. I didn't have a chartplotter last year (or any other electronics) on my trip to ths Scillys, so the day I set off around Britain, was my first time trying one out properly on Falanda, and its amazing!

Due to the extreme kindness of a friend, I now also have AIS, which works a bit like radar -picking up the signals of other boats with AIS nearby. However, it also shows you the name, speed, course and destination of a target. This means that if you have 4 big ships bearing down on you, your not calling

'big dark ship in aproximate postion -hajjasiudhdb-'

matching the description of the other 3 ships, you can immedietly call the vessel by name and make direct contact. (also very handy at night!).

We had to motor sail for a couple of hours on Monday morning, due to lack of wind, however the rest of the passage we were mostly sailing, and enjoying the sunny skies! I origionally thought we were going to have to get into Fish dock lock, which opens from 2 hrs either side High Water (HW+-2), meaning that we couldn't arrive in untill 6.30am on Teusday. Annoyingly, this meant that we had to try and slow down as much as possible on the lasy few hrs whilst sailing, which can be pretty frustrating.

Out to sea you dont have phone signal, for calls, texts, internet.., so it wasnt untill we had nearly arrived in Grimsby that we found out the guy who went round singlehanded last year, Timothy Long Sailing and who is actually the youngest person to do it alone had managed to sort out a berth for us both.

Sometimes, just trying to sort out where to stay for the night can be the most stressfull part of the whole trip!

Apart from dads autopilot breaking, nothing major went wrong, and I was even taught how to cook a 0 dishes meal by the masterchef himself (over VHF).

105 ish miles covered in 28hrs ish, on a non-windy day!

(also look at the last picture I thought it was cool!)

Falanda motoring into the Humber, sails down

Sunset on Monday night

Sunset on Monday night - flat calm

Ship with weird spinny funny things on top, not sure what they are...?

Blow up plastic ...cow...?

Dads plastic balloon find of the day (second)

Wind farms up close

Passing a ship at dawn

View of the sea whilst leaving Lowestoft. (green bouy on horrizon - navigation lights)

View of Lowestoft behind

Sunset on Monday

'Toothless' - no? The sky after sunset on monday night.