Ipswich

No, we haven’t sunk or gotten lost. We are exploring, meeting new friends and tackling the never-ending list.

After the exciting journey down to Lowestoft, we spent a day recovering and exploring. In recognition of our arrival, the Royal Norfolk & Suffolk Yacht Club hoisted a Canadian flag. It’s tiny but we were honoured. Lowestoft is a beachside holiday town with a long boardwalk.

Victorian buildings house games and snack food vendors.

After a stroll through town we noticed that even though it was Friday evening, they were rolling up the sidewalks at 17:30 so we headed back to the boat.

The next morning we were up and out by 8:00 to meet the tide going south. We had a wonderful push, at times to 8.8 kts, for the whole journey as we followed the bouys around the sandbars.

By 14:00 we were following instructions in the cruising guide as we headed past Felixstowe and into Harwich. Now, I have been to Felixstowe before and it was a lovely pebble beach. I remember all of the brightly coloured holiday huts where we visited friends and had tea. They are about 8 x 12 or the same size as a backyard shed in Canada. Mind you, this was more than 50 years ago. This is what I saw when we entered a few days ago.

Felixstowe is now one of the largest ports in Europe. Even so we passed a large variety of sailing vessels headed in every direction, including a classic Thames Barge.

and a dinghy that might have been like one that my father took my mother sailing in here. My mother remembered the wading through mud flats when the tide left them stranded and my dad remembered the sailing and the local pubs.

Heading up the River Orwell was more emotional than I expected. My mother grew up in Ipswich, so I have heard many stories of this part of England. Much of the river past Felixstowe has not changed although I imagine the marinas have grown astronomically. Arriving in Ipswich we headed into the lock used to control the depth of the marina basin.

By 16:00 we were tied up at dock K3 in Ipswich Haven Marina. Ahhhhh. This will be our home for the next month as we complete some chores and do some exploring. We are right in front of the marina office, so steps away from the facilities, showers and laundry. We are also close to a wonderful restaurant called the Last Anchor, a bread bakery with fresh products each morning, and a small chandlery. The centre of town is less than a kilometer walk with everything you could want. The public transportation is good and we are a couple of blocks from the train station, that could whisk us away to London or points beyond.

Our first day of exploring the town brought us to an important destination…

to top up our cellphone

Ipswich is a very walkable city with many pedestrian streets, although we will need to work at finding our way around because street signs are hard to find. We did find a Marks and Spencer’s with a huge grocery department and picked up a few supplies for dinner.

As we were cruising the Irish Sea, we became members of an organization called the Ocean Cruising Club. A group of volunteer cruisers who support each other in many places around the world. Through the Facebook page we managed to to discover that there would be several OCC boats in Ipswich when we arrived. An evening of drinks and dinner was arranged and we had a wonderful time getting to know everyone. We now have lots of new friends.

The next day we arranged to have lunch with a couple that live near Ipswich, but we met in the Azores. It was fun to catch up before they leave to go back to their boat in Turkey at the end of the week.

We are busy with boat chores. Yesterday we walked about 2 miles each way to the BIG chandlery. Unfortunately they did not stock the products we were looking for. We did manage to find a source for re-galvanizing our chain. We also stopped and had tea with some new friends. We hope to meet up with them again in London. I have been editing our “stuff in an effort to raise our waterline and cure our list to starboard.It is amazing how much stuff we realize we are not using. Some we will give away and some we will try to sell. We have lots of charts and cruising guides from North America and the Caribbean that will be out of date if we should go back there. They certainly add weight and take up space and we will be adding many more for our future plans.