There was no escape from Lockdown 2.<\/p>\n
November 5th was not the time to stage a dash into the Atlantic like I did in the summer. Instead, I found myself anchored in Kirkwall Bay in the Orkneys, waiting for the weather so that I could jump to Peterhead which, being on the mainland, was a better place to send away the mainsail for repair.<\/p>\n
Anyway, Scotland wasn\u2019t in Lockdown. Scotland was in the tiered system \u2013 not that it made a great deal of difference: All the pubs were shut and the restaurants weren\u2019t allowed to serve alcohol. Even the magical little Wireless Museum was closed for no better reason than it was simply too small to operate social distancing.<\/p>\n
Peterhead was also in the Scottish tiered system \u2013 which was just as well because, as usual, the marina wi-fi didn\u2019t stretch to the visitor\u2019s pontoon. However, they did have it in the caf\u00e9 at the Fishermen\u2019s Mission and The Dolphin chipper down by the quay – and Peterhead, being a major fishing harbour, has very good fish and chips.<\/p>\n
It was the next stage of Sailing Home for Christmas that was going to be the difficult bit: England was in full Lockdown once more and there are precious few all-weather anchorages on the north-east coast. It would have to be marinas \u2013 which were all closed.<\/p>\n
I did consider sailing the 400 miles to Essex non-stop but what with the thermometer never getting above ten degrees and only eight hours of daylight, you’d have to be a bit of a masochist for that. Besides, the wind never stayed fair for more than 24 hours at a time.<\/p>\n
The clincher was that I had been offered a second spinnaker pole in Blyth and I wasn\u2019t going to turn that down. I rang the harbourmaster: Would he let me in?<\/p>\n
Oh yes, the port was open. It was just the marina that was closed.<\/p>\n
Well, did he have somewhere I could tie up \u2013 perhaps in the fishing dock\u2026<\/p>\n
His advice \u2013 by which I took to mean “official advice” \u2013 was to go into the marina anyway. After all, there wouldn\u2019t be anyone there to tell me not to.<\/p>\n
I did, arriving at four in the morning for good measure. The visitors\u2019 pontoon was festooned with plastic tape designed, in the absence of a dockmaster, to signify \u201cGo Away\u201d. I tied up anyway, not realising that one of the consequences of the pontoon being closed was that nobody had hosed off the seagull droppings \u2013 something I discovered only later having trodden them all over the boat inside and out.<\/p>\n
Also, of course, with nobody in the office to give me a code for the gate, I couldn\u2019t get out of the place \u2013 not even for a takeaway at the chippy across the road.<\/p>\n
I stayed for four days \u2013 not plugging into the electricity since I didn\u2019t expect to be charged for being shut in.<\/p>\n
The next stop involved a bit more subterfuge \u2013 which is why I had better not say where it was. Everybody I rang cautioned: \u201cDon\u2019t tell anyone you\u2019ve spoken to me.\u201d<\/p>\n
This proved to be a bit awkward when, five minutes after making fast, a berth-holder checking on his boat (permitted under the regulations, apparently) asked straight out if I had permission.<\/p>\n
\u201cOh yes,\u201d I told him airily. \u201cI know everyone. I\u2019m quite a regular in the winter, you know. It\u2019s all OK. I’m aware of the regulations. I\u2019ll be very careful.\u201d<\/p>\n
On the strength of that, I got straight on the phone to a friend who had planned to drive over for coffee. He had presumed I wasn\u2019t \u201canal\u201d about regulations. I had to tell him that suddenly I had become precisely that.<\/p>\n
Six days, I stayed there \u2013 until the Windy app promised a spinnaker run down to Walton Backwaters. I could slide in there without telling anyone at all. Indeed, nobody would even know I\u2019d arrived.<\/p>\n
Indeed, nobody did \u2013 until I was obliged to put into yet another marina because the “spinnaker run” turned out to be six hours of engine – something that never happens in the summer. It was such a surprise to the machinery that the relief valve on the calorifier took fright at the heat and pumped all the freshwater over the side.<\/p>\n
Still, given what usually happens to me in \u201cLockdown Cruises\u201d, I suppose I shouldn\u2019t complain.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There was no escape from Lockdown 2. November 5th was not the time to stage a dash into the Atlantic like I did in the summer. Instead, I found myself anchored in Kirkwall Bay in the Orkneys, waiting for the weather so that I could jump to Peterhead which, being on the mainland, was a … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1345","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1345","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1345"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1345\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1350,"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1345\/revisions\/1350"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1345"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1345"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}