Early May 2014

Ti Gitu left the marina at Ipswich on the 1^st May. We have decided that there might be just too many problems in the Baltic this summer. Although the parts we had planned to visit are all countries in the EU and in NATO there have been troubles with Russian warships entering state waters and NATO has sent extra warships. We just feel that we would be ‘looking over our shoulder’ for the next bit of trouble coming so we decided to head for Scotland.

Ti Gitu went to the Walton backwaters for a few days to wait for the winds and we sailed North on the 5^th May. After a brilliant days sailing we went to Lowestoft to catch up with old friends John and Maria spending the night in Lowestoft Haven Marina. This is another marina run by ABP and is nearly empty. Of course if their prices were reasonable then the marina would have considerably more guests!!! It beats me how some of these East coast marinas expect to be able to charge South coast prices.

After a very pleasant evening with friends we needed to make use of the forecast SW wind to go further North and so left the next morning. Of course for the first part the wind did not blow well but all came with a vengeance for the second half of the journey.

As we were doing well we made for Bridlington which we made in 24 hours an average of 5 knots despite the early slow progress.

Bridlington is a drying harbour which has had pontoons fitted since our last visit. They put Ti Gitu on the end of one pontoon where we remain over the weekend, waiting for some nicer weather to go further North.