It had been a long passage down to Lowestoft and it was going to take a long night’s sleep for the two of us to come anywhere near recovery. Having said that we had to get up promptly (well by 10am anyway). There were lots of things to get organized before my friend Susie came down for the day from Cambridge.

The top priority was to have the liferaft serviced after the incident of “sharp spike meets rubber liferaft” in Grimsby. The staff at the yacht club supplied the phone number of the local Cosalt office. After a quick call they agreed to collect the raft later in the day.

With the raft sorted, we quickly busied ourselves collecting fuel and food while generally drying out the boat. We also made the decision to increase our reserve fuel bringing our range up to 110-120 miles under engine. It is always good practice to have a 20% fuel reserve “just in case” but the passage down from Grimsby would have been only just possible under power.

Susie arrived shortly after midday and it was good to see her smile as always. She has a highly understanding boss who had given her the day off at twelve hours notice. However, she might not have arrived on the best day as I felt as if I was sleepwalking!

We slept well on Monday night and for most of Tuesday for that matter. There was little to do but wait for the liferaft and plan our next passage, which will take us across the Thames.

I woke to the ring of my phone on Wednesday morning. It was Cosalt to confirm that they had inspected the raft and we could come and examine it. As you don’t get a chance to see your liferaft inflated very often (most of the time you wish never to see it) we had asked to see it once they had it out of the bag. After an early morning walk we were soon in the middle of the Cosalt warehouse.

As we thought the floor of the raft had been slightly damaged but as it is a “non-critical area” (not an air tank) it would be a relatively easy repair. It was good to see inside the raft and get an idea of what you would have to work with if it was ever used in anger. I asked them to install an extra two rocket flares inside the kit pack to compliment the flare packs already carried onboard. This guarantees at least some rocket flares make it to the liferaft. For the rest of the day I sat down and wrote up the website log which was starting to look a little out of date. On Thursday the Liferaft was returned to us and currently the forecast is looking good for a trip across the Thames in the next few days.