Whitby

Another hot day was predicted for the South of the country and it wasn't too bad as we left for Whitby although the wind made getting off the pontoon in Scarborough quite tricky and as we were at half tide on a falling tide there wasn't a lot of room to manoeuvre but with some hauling on ropes by the HM on shore and some deft engine work by the skipper we made it out and set off for Whitby. 

As promised the weather was hot and sunny - although not as hot as the London area - but with little or no wind so we chugged gently along the coast with the tide under us making Whitby a little earlier than planned. 

The large dredger in the harbour entrance caused the skipper to fret a little especially when he didn't respond on VHF16! He did however appear on deck pull the bucket in and wave us past on his port side! Chugging into Whitby I wish I had at least combed my hair as we were being photographed and filmed by lots of folks on the harbour wall! As we were early we tied up to the waiting pontoon and drank tea watching the many visitors to Whitby climb aboard pirate ships, yellow boats and old life boats for tours around the bay and counting our blessings that we were able to do this whenever we wanted! Promptly, 2 hours before high water, the swing bridge opened and we motored into Whitby Marina to be welcomed by the very pleasant and helpful HM.

The marina at Whitby is really handy for both the supermarket (just across the road) the station (next door to the supermarket) and the town (just past the station) so it is a great place to stop. It also has a good laundry so I spent the following morning doing the laundry and loading up the guardrails on the boat with stuff that wouldn't tumble dry!

The biggest disappointment for us in Whitby was that we couldn't have our planned fish and chip supper in the Magpie (hailed by Rick Stein as some of the best fish and chips anywhere) because the building had caught fire a couple of weeks before and was closed for renovation and repair. We had eaten there on a previous visit to Witby which made it worse because we knew what we were missing! 

We spent a lovely couple of days in this interesting and “gothic” town but as we had visited before we felt we needed to move on so the Thursday morning saw us chugging slowly out of the mirror calm harbour on the last bridge opening of the morning at 5.55am! Once clear of the bridge we again tied to the waiting pontoon to make bacon sarnies and coffee and wait for the tide. The tides around this part take some getting used to with the streams turning about two hours after high water - this has led to some robust skipper/navigator debates over the past few weeks! This has now been sorted by the purchase of a brilliant little app from Imray which does all the work for us, so now we just look at the arrows and check the time!