As always, it was a struggle to get to White Lady following a day of work and in the case of my daughter, a day of exams. We only have a small city car, so preparing for a week out on the boat is always a challenge for the suspension being loaded up to the headlining with jerry cans, clothing and supplies along with an Avon Redcrest dinghy.

The idea with the dinghy was to have a fun splash about and to paddle up a few channels inaccessible with ‘Lady’ given that our initial idea heading south was to proceed to Geldeston after the meet weekend at Beccles and re-convene with the northern Freeman fleet later in the week in time for the Three Rivers Race.

I had hoped to leave our home berth at Ranworth late afternoon in order to get a head start crossing Breydon Water on the Saturday but it didn’t happen.

It was however exciting to see our new canopy. It’s something I’d saved for over a couple of years and I specified it to fundamentally change access to the cockpit and provide substantially more space and headroom when cruising in less than ideal weather. Bailey & Stone made an excellent canopy with every feature you could hope for although the final fitting may have been a little rushed. It was certainly a great opportunity to try it out in anger over the following week.

It had to be an early start in order to cross Breydon Water with a favourable tide. The idea is to reach the confluence of the River Bure and River Yare at around slack low water. If you get this right, you can save an awful lot of fuel and it’s not much fun punching a spring tide. Of course we got it wrong having arrived perhaps an hour early but I do feel justified in making my excuses. I took three different sources for tides (A Broads Tide Calculator website, BBC Tides for Gorleston and the Navionics Chart App) all of which came back with differing passage times. Adding to the confusion was that one of the websites provided times in GMT rather than BST, so I would have to add an hour for that. We ended up punching the tide across Breydon and only experienced slack water around St. Olaves, on our way towards the Waveney.

We had acquired a new icom handheld VHF in order to be able to stay in touch with the Freeman fleet. Most participants were already moored at Beccles Yacht Station the day before. I thought this would be a good opportunity to test the range over land. I think my expectations were a little high and in reality, the range turned out to be around a quarter of a mile on the rivers even at high power. Nonetheless, this is fine when cruising in convoy and it’s also good to know that you’re not broadcasting to half of Norfolk.

We arrived at Beccles in the evening having gone straight through without stops from Ranworth with Gemma on the helm. Our new Cobb BBQ was primed and ready to go in minutes having been just about the only boat not sporting one over the last few years. It’s a great thing and I’ll probably blog about it in future suffice to say the clean-up is a bit of a challenge but then this is watery ‘glamping’ after all.

It was a particular pleasure to meet and reminisce with Terry Avery who knew my late father well professionally through shipping. It’s a small world at times !

Sunday gave everyone the chance to catch up and in our case a chance to provision and fill up with fuel. The walk with two 10l filled jerry cans doesn’t get any easier. The customary paper aeroplane competition posed a real challenge, fighting extreme crosswinds. I think a screwed up paper ball would have been the best bet if it were not for maintaining the spirit of aviation.

The weather did relax somewhat in the evening and made for several very pleasant sundowners among fabulous people and quite a few dogs.

We did try a new accessory based on previous experience mooring stern-to at Beccles. The quay heading has an overhang which is supported by sheet piling. When the tide is low, there’s a high risk of snagging the transom under this capping and at high water, fenders tend to pop out over the quay potentially leading to being hung up or in our case transom and rudder damage. To this end we rigged a fender board, in essence a plank most of the width of the transom on strops to act as a sacrificial buffer between quay, fenders and transom. This can be lowered sufficiently to ‘kiss’ the waterline and reduce the risk of fenders popping out or going astray. This seemed to work admirably so will remain on the boat, stowed in the aft cuddy.

Around mid morning, the majority of the fleet left for Oulton Broad Yacht Station. It was rather breezy and the idea was to catch some of the power boat racing on Oulton. In fact the wind severely impacted the racing but a handful of boats were out to reward the gathered crowd on the shore. A Formula 1 powerboat was particularly impressive performing what amounted to showcase circuits ahead of being shipped out to compete in Asia for the next year. There was one high-speed powerboat capsize but no one was injured fortunately.

It was our first visit to the Oulton Broad Yacht Station with a friendly berthing master happily taking lines and getting everyone organised on the floating pontoon. The pontoon had fresh water and I’m sure there would have been electricity if we had needed it.

In the evening, most owners and crews alighted to the ‘Lady of the Lake’ pub for dinner and then participating in their quiz night.

The food was good, nothing special but certainly enjoyable with a standard selection of dishes. Given that we were a bit of a hoard, the service was very good and waiting staff were smiling and informative. The quiz was very well presented too and our team dis pretty well coming in around fourth or fifth from around twelve teams. Like all quizzes these days, it does frustrate me that I know the answers but just can’t recall them. It’s an age thing which I should just brush off as it’s only a bit of fun but it does highlight my own entropy.

Sticking with the fleet, we collectively fired up engines to leave Oulton mid morning. Destination today was The Ferry House Pub at Surlingham.

Traversing the Waveney to the Yare was perfectly timed by whoever was organising the fleet to slack water at Reedham having used the New Cut. Although there was chat of stopping for a short break at the Hardley Cross moorings, the consensus was to continue all the way to The Ferry House given the weather was wet and windy. We all moored safely and promptly placed our food orders at the pub to make their life a little easier. A meal at The Ferry House is something of an annual ritual and the food was honest and generous as always.

Added interest came from a bathtub which had been moored but suffered the mis-fortune of an exceptionally high tide and very strong winds blowing the shallow drafted vessel over the very low quay heading. Once the tide had gone out, it was left hanging precariously over the quay. I actually don’t think they did much wrong other than being on a ‘lee shore’ or perhaps having slightly too tight lines.

It was another relatively relaxed start with all boats heading into Norwich, generally to top up on supplies or fuel. Most of the smaller Freemans gathered to make further passage beyond the Norwich Yacht Station up to the bitter end of navigation. This is something I’d always wanted to try but never did for fear of  fouling a shopping basket, electric bike, weed or the traditional running aground. Fortunately, despite the trepidation, none of this happened and what a charmed section of river this is. I truly think this is one of Norwich’s (if not the Broads) best kept secrets and absolutely worth trying if you have a small boat.

Following our short Wensum excursion, we decided to pull up at the Yacht Station for supplies and a short wander into Norwich town centre, satisfying my daughters craving for bubble tea and being tempted into Jarrold’s renowned basement food hall. I never knew I had to have a £12 bag of pasta or Ethiopian chocolate.

Returning to the Yacht Station, we paid our dues as on arrival we had no cash and the card machine had broken at the toll office. It really is rather too expensive in my view with an overnighter coming in at £18 for was is a quite exposed and noisy berth and particularly steep given that we are toll-payers.

In order not to incur additional charges, we left to rendezvous with the fleet, which had already left, at Brammerton Common. I took a bit of a gamble with fuel as I generally like to cruise on a full tank when possible but the faff of walking back into town with jerry cans wasn’t appealing.

A gap had be ‘commandeered’ for us with a little careful boat placement and we had soon settled in with BBQ’s out enjoying a brief lull in the wind and a lovely sunset. By way of being different, we tried using a Paella pan accessory on the Cobb to make a tomato, sausage and bean stew going full Keith Floyd with the preparations.

It was a fabulous and relaxed evening with the boats carrying children having paired off from the fleet to cross Breydon a day earlier than the rest of us.

We’d reached the watershed of the cruise, now making our way slowly back to home waters but not without stopping for the night at Reedham Ferry.

En-Route the fleet diverted through Bargate or Surlingham Broad and across Rockland Broad to give a couple of southern broads freshers a guided tour.

It was looking marginal as to whether we’d have space to moor on the concrete quay heading but we managed to squeeze on whilst still leaving scope in our mooring lines for the tide. Although there was space on the slightly dilapidated grassy moorings nearby, it turns out that the silt build-up would have seen us grounded as was experienced by Aquarella, a Freeman 28 which took the bottom for a couple of hours.

Many of the fleet had their evening meal at the Reedham Ferry Inn but we just popped in for a couple of early afternoon drinks as it was getting a little expensive but didn’t want to abuse the generosity of a mooring for the night. The interior of the Reedham Ferry Inn belies the exterior and is fantastically atmospheric and pleasant. This definitely has personality in a good way.

A rather early start was required to make slack water across Breydon but it started bright and sunny and despite blustery winds, the crossing went smoothly in company. We did cross a shade early but didn’t have to punch too much into the tide.

By my reckoning and having observed the tide relative to various tidal information sources, I would suggest making passage time for Breydon Water 2 hours after low water BST at Yarmouth (Gorleston) tide station

We remained together until Upton Dyke where the fleet split and split again at the Thurne mouth, saying our goodbyes until the Salhouse meet in the autumn.

Our journey wasn’t over as we needed to top up on supplies and get some laundry done. This meant passage through to Hoveton, choosing the moorings a little upriver in order to enjoy side-on mooring.

One challenge was to see if we could fit under Wroxham Bridge with our screen up. The new canopy has been rigged that the middle canopy supporting hoop can be lowered to screen height without removing the canvas. It turns out that with 2m on the tide gauge, we can clear the bridge but only just. This is great information for our future exploits.

The annual early season southern cruise came to an end with an evening trip back to our home berth at Ranworth and will go down as one of our favourite cruises to date.

The next adventure was the Three Rivers Race, but that’s not for here.