Up against the wall

Conway Marina for 3 nights charged us £85, so as the forcast was still for quite a lot of wind mostly SW ( the direction we wanted to head in ) we thought rather than wait around to pay Conway Marina yet more money we would go up river into the town and dry out along the quay. First job was to find some paint rollers for the anti fouling paint, the chandlers in the marina was charging £12.70 for a roller and tray so Lynne and I walked over the bridge to Tescos and bought three for the same money.

High water was around 11.30 so as usual the wind and weather cooperated to make our departure as difficult as possible so we lined the boat across our berth ( basically pulled it upwind as we were being blown on to a pontoon ) it all went quite well.

We arrived at the quay just on high water and Ian from Silvery Sea waved at us from the pontoon in the river, he was also coming over to the quay to dry out.

We arranged our lines and also put our reserve fuel cans on the wall side, we also rigged the main halliard to a handy lamppost and deployed our leg. All to make Dark Tarn lean against the wall. We then waited nervously for the water to disappear! 

The tide is surprisingly fierce and there was a considerable current running in the opposite direction to the tidal flow, slightly confusing but then I am used to eddy currents. Within a couple of hours we had dropped 4 Mtrs and were solidly aground.

Ian very kindly let us use the powerful jet wash first to clean our bottom, which was surprisingly clean after a year in the water. I think if anything I had been a little over cautious with our angle of lean but between you and me I have never done this before, so it was all a little experimental. However it all went surprisingly well and after a really good scrub we let the boat rest and retired with Ian to the pub for a strategy meeting.

We were in a rather pretty situation however the decision now has to be do we stay for a couple of days and anti foul the boats bottom which will need us to adjust to a very tidal rhythm of managing the lines on every falling tide or do we postpone the anti foul and stick to the original plan of drying out in the Fal river in Cornwall?

Only the weather can decide. We will certainly stay overnight which means line handling until 2.30 in the morning.