The final cruise inland through Great Yarmouth to our new home mooring.
We are on the approach to Great Yarmouth. We have been trying since passing Lowestoft to ring the Harbour master and inform him of our arrival. No answer, for the tenth time. The VHF radio is on but no sound is coming out of it. There could be big ships entering or leaving the harbour and there is Yarmouth Haven Bridge and Breydon Bridge to get under if the tide isn’t too high already. Skipper Johan isn’t at all disturbed, he’s just enjoying himself. Phil and I are just a little tense…
Suddenly as we sight the entrance and the port traffic lights, the radio comes to life. Our radio hasn’t seen real action since 8 years ago, we are all a bit doubtful as to whether it really is working alright. I try to call Yarmouth Radio, the reply with a Norfolk accent over VHF isn’t easy to decipher! Skipper see’s we have green for go, so in we go! There is some sharp turning into the harbour and the Harbour master is heard on the radio saying “There’s a little leisure boat poodleing through now…”. We wave at him and the other gongoozlers high up above us on the harbour wall.
Oil rig fuel ships
We are passing some big ships now, thankfully all berthed and not on the move. Ahead we just have two bridges to pass and we are praying that our good speed up the coast has saved us from having to spend the night on the quay waiting for low tide to get under the first which is the lowest of the two.
As we get closer to it, we are all searching for a bridge gauge to tell us the height. It doesn’t show itself until we are quite close and it is covered in mud so you can’t read it! We have to estimate that it would have shown a little more than 3m so we should just make it having an air draft of 3m but Phil would have been more comfortable with a bit more height. We approach very slowly and Phil gets on top of the cabin to get a good eye level view.
Will we make it???
‘Clang’ goes the aerial! Thankfully the only part to suffer as we pass under the bridge. Phew, the relief on Phil’s face as we pass through to the other side and under the next bridge onto Breydon Water!
A relieved Phil
A wide expanse of water is ahead with tall markers denoting the channel. A cruiser waves and toots at us in welcome, I hoot our loud horn in return. There are Egyptian geese on a sandbank to one side and cormorants waving their wings to dry. We’ve made it, we’re in Norfolk!
Me looking happy!
We are only 1 hour away from our destination! Cows on the bank and a growing background of reeds swishing in the breeze. We see old windmills and herons flying low. It feels like paradise.
River Waveney approaching St Olaves
St Olaves comes into sight and our home mooring approaches! We have made it! Hoogtij has arrived!
The story from the beginning, while we cruise up the coast…
So this is it, the beginning of our adventure…
It is 9am and we have been cruising for four hours since sunrise. The sun is playing across the rug and footstool as I write. The engine is purring away and the sea is calm and empty on a bright summers day. Zeeshan Khan – ship cat is fast asleep as we pass Walton-on-the-Nase. I calmed down quite a bit once we got going, my attention and excitement being drawn to sunbathing sleepy seals on sandbanks at the mouth of the Crouch.
One of many buoys to guide us…
Today is not the start of the story, that started some ten years ago. As we cruise up the coast, I’ll tell you everything from the beginning…
It all began when wildly in love, my now husband Phil and I wrote down all our dreams for the future together on a white board in our kitchen. We were renting in Southend-on-sea, a stunning open plan converted church. We had a lot of fun there, however gradually the surrounding intrusions from arguing neighbours, drunk teens and the constant sirens in the urban jungle began to grate… Living in France became our fantasy after many holidays in the South. So, let’s live on a boat and cruise through France!
Zeeshan Khan taking over charting duties…
I am a firm believer in making dreams come true, of making them real, of directing your own path in life. However, it does take determination, perseverance and guts to do it.
We began by researching everything we could about living on a boat, barges, moorings… We joined the DBA – The Barge Association, a fountain of knowledge and advice. One day I surprised Phil with a weekend away on a hotel barge ‘Baglady’ on the Thames. Sitting on the front deck, we decided that we could make this happen, now, not in years to come. Through the DBA we contacted a Dutchman who ‘found’ barges for people in the Netherlands. To us, it became an obvious choice to look where barges were plentiful and cheaper than in the U.K.
Hoogtij is rocking gently side to side as she steams through the shiny clear waters of the East coast.
We thought it might take several visits to the Netherlands to find our perfect floating home, it didn’t. We fell in love with Hoogtij, the first boat we were shown! She wasn’t a barge at all, but a converted launch boat built in Germany 1936 . She was a Hamburger Barkas with beautiful curvy lines, stolen by the Dutch after the Second World War. She was used as a troop carrier in the Dutch Navy until 1984. Her first owner then converted her into a live aboard ship filled with beautiful carpentry. The first moment we stepped aboard, we felt at home. There was a warmth, an imprint of the affection of previous owners and the ships history radiated from every original detail. You cannot describe to someone who lives in a house, the relationship you develop with a boat you live on. Every boat has a character, a personality, and old boats even more so. They will frustrate and anger you, yet you can feel such love and pride in them.
So began a tense time of purchasing Hoogtij, the survey, the boatyard and bringing her back to the U.K. Everything complicated by a foreign language, foreign country and our naivety. Nothing was easy, but the best things in life aren’t. To this day we celebrate the 11th June, the day we signed the contract that passed Hoogtij to our care…
We are just over a third of the way up the coast towards Great Yarmouth and about to cross a busy shipping lane at Harwich. what I thought was a town in the distance turned out to be huge container ship!
Container ship whose path we must cross!Another monster!
Just ahead we spy Sealand, a micro-nation on an off shore platform built by the British during World War 2. The decommissioned Roughs Tower was used as a pirate radio station base before being seized by Paddy Roy Bates in 1967 and declared a sovereign state in its own right.
Sealand!
Before we moved onto the boat I was beginning to feel frustrated by our casual use of resources in normal life. I felt as a society we had lost the fundamental skills of self-sufficiency and our relationship with nature. Living on a boat has given us much more respect for fresh water, fuel, waste, electricity and a closer understanding of nature.
It is midday now, having just survived two large bow waves from the container ships we passed. We held on tight as Hoogtij rolled dramatically. The cat is now sea-sick, has thrown up and hidden under the sofa in the hope that his world will feel more normal under there.
With the aid of a skipper we got Hoogtij through the Netherlands, Belgium and across the channel to our residential berth at Essex Marina on the River Crouch. We were so naive to what we had let ourselves in for! Phil was left in the Netherlands for several weeks preparing the ship for the sea crossing whilst I returned homeless to the U.K after a weeks annual leave (The time I thought it would take to bring back our ship!) I didn’t want to miss the sea passage so I took the Eurostar to Belgium to rejoin Phil and skipper for 16 hours of sea and sky.
The first 4 hours we had thick fog (we had no horn) and a Beaufont scale of 4 which meant we rocked and rolled, pounding up and down on the waves! It was an experience like no other yet we made it home in one piece! Hoogtij handled it beautifully with her Kromhout 6 cylinder heart beating steadily away! (Todays journey is much more peaceful).
At the helm…
There followed 8 years of work on her many aging and failing systems. We were both working full-time in our jobs and looking after family. It takes focused determination to make a dream come true. There were many times when everything was going wrong at once and the enormity of the work involved threatened to break us.
We didn’t buy Hoogtij only to live on, we chose her for the dimensions and ability to cruise the canals of France. The final part of the dream was to cruise with her. Working full-time I felt disjointed from my life on our little ship. It felt wrong to keep her tied up in a marina growing seaweed on her bottom. We did take her out for occasional cruises on the Crouch and Roach, which was challenging due to the strong tides and winds. There was constant maintenance and little by little improvements. At times the work needed was overwhelming, exhausting, always expensive. Many people just don’t make it this far, but we were both passionate and devoted to Hoogtij. We know intimately every inch of her hull, having sanded, ground and painted her ourselves, even sandblasting in 2020.
8 hours in and we are making excellent progress over the sparkly water, just passing Aldeburgh, following a lonely yacht ahead of us. We sight to our starboard the silhouette of a Lowestoft sailing trawler – the Excelsior.
The Excelsior
Brexit tragically shattered our plans to reach France with Hoogtij. When your boat is your only home, it would be out of the question to leave it every 3 months. We can still hope that one day there will be a more conducive arrangement that enables a longer visa without substantial cost and complication. For now we head for new adventures on the beautiful Norfolk Broads.
Slowly all the obstacles and responsibilities that held us back from cruising with our little ship fell away. Finally we realised that it was time to take the plunge, Phil, Zee, Hoogtij and I , do it now or never do it at all! So I left my 19 year career in the NHS and Phil retired from his 40 year career in gardening. Time for a change, time to dance with the unknown.
It is 2.20pm and we are passing Southwold. Hoogtij is touching 10 knots, the tide running with us. It really is a glorious day for going to sea…
It is 4am and the last 2 hours I have been tossing and turning in bed imagining the worst case scenarios for going to sea. Are we doing the right thing? Are we mad?
Adventure isn’t easy, it’s scary and that’s what makes it a real adventure. You have to face the unknown and let go of fear…
We are taking our little ship and home Hoogtij from Essex Marina on the river Crouch to St Olaves, on the Norfolk Broads. It is a new beginning and a new adventure. We have to head east out to sea, turn north and travel up the coast, then west and into Great Yarmouth. It might sound easy to a sailor, but it’s a daunting prospect to me. Hoogtij is my home, everything I own, and the last great journey was a long time ago…
River Scent - Life Afloat 