Aretia is back on Freshwater.

With the fine weather window we had over the bank holiday, it was a good time to start the trip back to Nottingham. With a good forecast, spring tides, and just enough daylight it seemed like a good idea to take the Jaguar 22 into the Wash and to in to the port of Boston. For once, my god for once, the plan actually worked.!

The overall plan is to take Aretia from Boston up the River Witham to Lincoln then on to the Fossdyke Navigation before finally joining the Salty section of the River Trent before heading to Nottingham. At Nottingham Aretia will be dragged out and taken by road to Langar Marina.

From Wainfleet Ditch to Boston is approximately 10 miles. A 3 hour trip along Boston Deeps and then anchor off Tabs Head in Clay Hole. The trip covered the full length of the Wash from the Steeping River to the Witham.

So on Bank Holiday Monday it was an early rise 0400am to get out by 0530am. We weren't the only ones. Pride was making a journey to Grimsby and FV Challenge was on it's way to do some surveying off the Bombing Range at Friskney.

The weather forecast was for F3-4 NW dropping. Obviously we hit F4-F5 SW. But hey localised must have been conditions. We headed out over the channel after being overtaken by Challenge and waved off by Sammy the Seal. Pride followed us as we headed in to the wash on their way to the Parlour Channel. We were on a tight reach touching 5knts and having to reef down the Genny, with much more and the main would have had to been reefed. John helmed most of the leg whilst I concentrated on the charts and working out which navigation marks were actually missing (plenty). One thing it was, was bloody cold. almost like an October morning rather than August Bank Holiday. After an hour the sun started to come through and we could make out Boston Stump.

With John at the helm as he doesn't like popping below decks 'sea sickness and all that' time was made for breakfast and a cup of sludge.

Following the navigation marks made the pilotage pretty easy. Past the Freeman Channel there were several other boats coming out of Boston. A couple of sailing and also a few motor cruisers, including Antigua whom we moored against over in Wells.

After coming in to Clay hole we dropped the 'pick' in 7m of water and settled in for 6hours. The whole Boston fishing fleet seem to bomb past plus also another 10 boats coming out from the Witham.

After a cooked breakfast, a spot of fishing, a beer, read of the paper and a little sunburn it was time to drop the mast. This all went pretty well and eventually we got this strapped to the boat. I wouldn't fancy doing this in much more wind.

The entrance to the Witham is all fairly straight forward, the only thing to catch you out getting to the first 'pen' at Grand Sluice Lock. Basically 3 hours before HW you can make your way over the bar at the entrance to Tabs Head. Tabs Head basically splits the Witham from the Welland and the tide as you can imagine does like to push you a little closer than you may wish. After that it's all deep water. Big container ships, but deep water. You then have an hour to get to the sluice prior to the lock closing over HW for 4 hours or more. Obviously we just scraped in literally by the skin of our teeth. The lock gates were closing as we were going through.

After mooring up in Boston it was off home. Returning in a couple of weeks to make our way up the Witham.