Cruising from Denver to Grimsby
Cruising from Denver to Grimsby

The sea voyage from Denver to Grimsby passing under the Great Ouse bridges with good headroom and then Skegness in poor visibility and Mablethorpe where people thronged the beach and round the spit guarding the Humber estuary before cruising through the gates to Grimsby Royal Dock and the Marina. Just Di felt ill with the trip and the rest of the crew were fine.

It was an early start to the day and the 5.50am Radio 4 weather forecast for shipping was the first order of the day, followed by the inland shipping forecast on Radio 3 at 6.55am. These were still very favourable, and the only danger was to be fog for which we would keep a good watch and use our radar to advantage. I watched the tide closely and remained intrigued by its behaviour. It ebbs for a full 9-10 hours and then floods quickly in 1-2. You are waiting for the water to arrive and fear that tidal calculations are in error until it suddenly floods in and saves the day! It was still out first thing, and I took several photographs of the mud-banks for future reference. We made ready and then left at about 8.30am with the tide still flooding slightly which was about the earliest that we could manage.

** "Read More" BELOW for the complete story **

We made good progress down river at 7 knots and soon caught up the tidal ebb which takes place earlier the closer you are to the sea. As we went, we therefore made successively better clearances under the bridges and gathered more and more assistance from the ebb until it was adding fully 2 knots to our speed over the ground as this was a spring tide. The weather forecast had been spot on and the sea was calm with the mist the main hazard. We passed Cork Hole at our planned 10.00am (GMT, 11.00am BST) time and were on our way. I had trouble getting the cross-track control going on the auto-pilot established and this meant that we strayed closer than I would have liked to the sand banks whilst I was pre-occupied but the depth sounders and plotters alerted us to this and we always had 2-3 metres of depth at worst. Once I had the systems guiding the boat automatically, I could relax and concentrate on logging the trip and events. We followed a course almost due north from the Sunk buoy, converging on Skegness.

For this traverse of the wash, the very poor visibility meant that we could get no bearings, except by using the radar for range and bearing information, and we were very glad of this set plus the navigator and plotter without which we could not have done this trip safely. The family enjoyed the flat calm and also the sighting of several Grey Seals as we approached the shallower water. We then followed the coast round and went off out about three miles to avoid the mud banks at the southern entrance to the Humber. Again, there were no features for manual navigation, but the equipment kept us on course. The only worry was the shipping including some survey vessels that seemed to be towing "arrays" between them which I was frightened of fouling. It is always a worry when going astern of fishing vessels as well.

For the last leg of our course, west into the Humber, the wind freshened and the sea livened a little and we had the fascination of working our way through the large vessels anchored in the Humber Mouth waiting for the tide. Our new VHF aerial extension was very effective and we had the chance to report our passage to the Yarmouth Coastguard and to warn Grimsby "Royal Dock" of our arrival on channel 9. We approached Grimsby with the aid of the navigator and plotter and only had to wait in the harbour basin for half an hour before they could make the levels and open both gates of Royal Dock for us to cruise up to Grimsby Marina. They make this level between two hours and one hour before high water and then leave the gates open until high water when they are closed to keep the water in but they prefer pleasure craft to pass at the beginning and end of this period if there are any shipping movements to keep them separate. Apart from this, the lock is operated for a "penning" a couple of hours before and a few hours after high water as well.

There was nobody to receive us at the Grimsby Marina, but I had previously called the owner and was told to moor at the diesel berth which we did with another smaller craft from York which came through with us. It was very warm and humid as a contrast from being out in the sea breeze and I thought that the trip had gone very well but Diana was alone in feeling ill. She had taken a second dose of the anti-sea-sickness pills, had been spending too much time un-protected in the sun and also had a period coming on to boot! We settled down for the evening as best we could. At least there was electricity which I quickly connected up to. I then went for a walk to survey Grimsby as Di slept. It has a good shopping centre with all manner of banks and building societies as well as a McDonalds and Pizza Hut and retail and food shops galore. For others, there were also numerous pubs which would be a major attraction. It has a train station and a good bus service. The only trouble being that they would not be open tomorrow as it was a Sunday.