Going Round Britain
After a hard day plagued by niggly throttle cable problems we eventually made it to Roa Island we were supposed to be carrying out routine maintenance today but as it had taken most of the day to cover some 30miles we were now looking at the work being carried out today with us moving tomorrow . We had to be away from Fleetwood by 1100 Hours and we actually made it, moving across to Morecombe bay and then sat waiting for the tide to get into Arnside after some time it was decided by the land crew to send us to Glasson Docks as this would give us more time as Arnside dry’s out, so we headed off but after 10min Pat’s throttle cable broke after swapping this over and informing the Coast Guard we got under way 10 min later the second cable snapped leaving Pat stranded, at the same time we were called by the land crew to say we had missed the lock gate opening time unless we could be there in 30 min, with no chance of making this we put Zapcat2 on the tow rope and headed off to Roa Island but heading up wind and into the waves / swell it was really heavy going and i must have swallowed a gallon of sea water Pat was in the front of the boat he was being plastered with braking waves all i could see was the water braking over his helmet.
13th July
We had a great rest at the Netherwood Hotel in Grange over Sands fully revived we set about repairing the boats and sorting out the van, I disappeared and brought my Mum and Dad down to take a look at the boats and then dropped them back home before taking Gina back to the train station, this was a very emotional farewell as we have never been apart for this long and i miss her dearly it would be great if our plan had panned out and we had a camper for us all to stay in but finance was not forthcoming so we are as a 4 man team tenting it or beg steal or borrowing rooms for us to stay in. Tomorrow is a big one first leg 132 miles we have to be up by 3am and heading of down to Barrow to the boats, we are heading to Portpatrick and then onto Campbeltown where we collect our new throttle cables that were made and shipped out to the RNLI station there, from there we head weather providing up to Oban for a overnight stop another 89 miles. As its now 1230 and i have to be up at 3am i better give this a rest. More up dates tomorrow