We left Pin Mill at 0700 hours on the last of the ebb to take us out of the river. We went past Pye End at slack water and we were a couple of hours into the flood when we hit Gunfleet Sands. When I say hit, it was more of a scrape with the guage on 2.1m (Caressa's draft) for a few nervous minutes.
Safely over we navigated our way through the channels and the swatchways and into London River.
We got as far as the QEII bridge before the tide turned against us. There's nowhere really to stop and get ashore around there so we just kept going. We could have picked up a mooring and spent the night aboard but Gerry was keen to get ashore. We just kept going and going till we couldn't get any further.
We tied up alongside Butlers Wharf at 21.30 and went ashore for supper at Pont de la Tour. After some great food and dreadful service, for which refused to pay, we returned to find we were being told to move on. Having been ashore Gerry was now happy to sleep on a mooring which we found right outside St Katharine's Dock.
Next morning we had until 1700 before we could lock in so we took a trip down the river. We had a cooked breakfast on deck in the sun moored off Canary Wharf then we picke dup a mooring off the majestic Royal Hospital in Greenwich.
Andy Smith, a member and qualified London guide, who lives in Greenwich was on the shore waiting to give us a guided tour of the painted Hall, the Chapel an the Trafalgar.
We puzzled how to get ashore from the mooring. We reckoned while rowing the inflatable to the shore the tide would take us about half mile upstream so we didn't immediately jump at that solution.
Luckily there was a rib buzzing about. We hailed them and asked them for a lift. They were hapopy to oblige and they came back at 1500 to take us back to the boat. That was service.
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