Den Helder to Great Yarmouth

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Friday 1^st



Den Helder to Great Yarmouth – 122nm







A good sail across the North Sea (for Phil) I was somewhat seasick and the tablets took quite a while to work this time. Nevertheless we got across with Phil doing the day shift and into the night and I took a watch from 2230 for a few hours. We arrived into the mouth of the river and navigated up to the town quay in darkness and all tied up by 0430. It’s not the nicest looking place to settle in, a huge concrete wall to tie up to – that is not floating, but it’s right in the middle of town and Great Yarmouth is actually a very lovely old city. We’ll be here a few days now as the weather is very ordinary for almost the rest of the week.



We were originally going to sail as far north as we could but then the weather window closed and we really didn’t have much spare time to get into a safe port. There aren’t many places to call into up here on the East side of UK.







There are no facilities here at the town quay so we called up the local Seafarers to see if they had showers there that we could use. Pastor Peter said that they’ve only been open 2 weeks and that the ablution block is in phase 2 of their building. So now showers - until about 2 mths time. However he said we could have a shower at his place if we were desperate. I told him I’d call him back if we couldn’t find another solution. Well half hour later he was here at the wall, calling out to us. He invited us back to his place for a shower, to do some washing and for dinner. He’ll pick us up tomorrow at 3pm. God Bless Pastor Pete!!







The weather was quite nice so we went for an explore through the town and down to the seaside. It’s a great beach, a big beach, with all goings on you could imagine on the foreshore, shops, cafes, game parlours, a cinema, and the list goes on. The main street or ‘mall’ going down there was so packed with people and lined with so many shops. It would be great to explore further. We liked this little town and would’ve been very happy to explore more if it wasn’t for the weather. Aldi, Lidl and any other shop you needed to restock right close. Lots of history – Lord Nelson was from here and often came back after his voyages away. In fact there are still some cottages here that he owned. He bought them for his injured or sick crew to recuperate when they returned!!







Came in very windy as expected so Phil went and got some planks of wood from across the channel and then 2 tyres and we rigged up a good fending system against the concrete wall. With the winds so strong, we really didn’t want to venture far from the boat. We met another couple, Nick and Alison, doing the same thing as us on their boat Magic Hen. We had sundowners with them, went out for dinner, and afternoon tea/passage planning on their boat, but didn’t venture much further than that. One of us was always on board. The winds were strong and the current was just amazing!!!

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