The girls riding ponies at Wells-next-the-Sea
The girls riding ponies at Wells-next-the-Sea

Another day in Wells-next-the-Sea taking the dinghy to the beach as before and then moving The Paxton Princess to a drying sand bank mooring to take a look at the stern gear at low tide.

I collected the family from the beach, and after removing some debris from the port screw, I found the ‘spurs’ rope cutters damaged and did my best to repair them before the tide returned and we returned to moor at the harbour quay overnight

I was up quite early this morning, intending to survey the sand banks but was distracted first by the plight of the Dutch yacht moored astern of us that had grounded during the night at low tide and was pitching right forward as its keel is fitted well aft. I went over to ask if there was anything that I could do and was told that the situation had been much worse earlier! We got rid of the girls into Playland (a quay-side indoor play place) this morning for a couple of hours which let Diana and I get on with some chores on the boat. Diana cleared up whilst I cleaned the outside and did some minor repairs.

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We got together for lunch at K's Burgers again and then set off, as yesterday, for the seaside in our inflatable dinghy. But first, I moved the Paxton Princess on to a mooring over a drying sand bank with the idea of taking a look at the fouled log impeller that had been annoying me. I got the girls to the seaside sand area and then walked back to inspect the boat hull. The water was slow to fall in the place that I had chosen and so I completed the task of cleaning the hull while waiting. In moving some debris from the port screw, I then noticed that both of the shaft cutters had lost their anode blocks and that the port cutters were jammed in a sort of cross-bill which was very disturbing.

There then followed a hectic period where I tried telephoning for a marine engineer's help to attend the spurs cutters before the tide came in but, failing in this endeavour, I telephoned Harold Hayles Ltd and got their advice on removing them for inspection to avoid the shafts being unbalanced. They thought that I must have had tangled with something fairly substantial which, of course, I had - first in the New Bedford River and then on the Yorkshire Ouse. I had to remove them with Allen keys but it turned out that they were non-metric and so I had to run into Wells (literally) to buy some more before the shops closed. I got back and managed to remove them in the end but it was a bit of a worrying experience as we were dependant on the boat and its continuing operation.

After this, walked up to meet the girls walking back from the beach and Di was at first angry until she heard what delayed me. We had tea at the chalet-park snack bar again and then we all got the inflatable back from the beach to the boat by wading and pulling through the shallow parts. Diana was a dead loss as she trod on a crab and refused to go any further, but Debbie helped and Della sat inside for a ride. Once back, we started to dig under the boat to reveal the log but the fast-rising tide soon engulfed us and it all ended up in a mad scramble to get aboard and safely retrieve the inflatable. We returned to the Wells Harbour Quay for the night, after all of the excitement.