The friend from work who kindly let me moor Sirenia at his riverside bungalow last year and his son came out for the weekend.

They arrived after dark on Friday.

Up and about quite early Saturday morning Coffee and bacon rolls for breakfast.

Off the mooring at 9ish.

We couldn't get over the Bar until about 10:30 so we went for a sail up river to above Waldringfield on the flood and then turned back and slowly headed down river punching the tide.

Once out we headed down the coast and into The Walton Backwaters.

This was a big spring tide day and the wind had a lot of north in it.

We decided to see how far we could get going round Horsey Island.

We got all the way.

We crossed the Wade with a foot of water under the keel and only started the engine to get up the Walton Channel as we did not fancy tacking through the moorings.

By 14:30 we had the anchor down by Stone Point for lunch of Hot rolls, ham cheese etc.

We then headed of for Felixstowe to look at the ships and then carried on up the Orwell.

A phone call secured us a berth in the Ipswich Wet Dock.

As we headed up river I put a sausage casserole in the oven.

We got into the lock at dusk and went on to find our allocated slot with the illumination of the street lighting around the dock.

We sat down to the casserole and some tined spuds and then went to explore the area.

In the morning, after breakfast, we explored further and found Spirit Yachts base with the 100 footer moored up outside.

She had been at the Southampton show last week.

What a boat!

She does not look big until you start looking at the normal fittings and realise how small they look.

We headed of to the lock and where back on the Orwell by 10:00

Not enough wind to sail so it was a gentle motor down stream.

Below Suffolk Yacht harbour we found a small racing fleet of yachts all with spinnakers up but no wind at all.

Once we where out of the harbour the was a bit of a breeze and we sailed back to the Deben and with a lot of help from the incoming tide some of the way back up river.

Back on the mooring by 14:45.

Mileage for the weekend 58.2

Mileage for the year 791