2017 Lona's homeward trip to Burnham-on-Crouch

End of May Floris and I sailed Lona across from Blankenberge to England for seeing her home town Burnham and meeting Anthony Steel who owned her for 30 years.

We first went to Woolverstone on the river Orwell, just beyond Pin Mill where we arrived in the evening. A fine 121 mile trip in 14 hours with fine 3-4 Beaufort weather.

After three days of hanging around in the rivers and in the Medusa Channel Dick Durham who writes for the Classic Boat magazine joined us for the 70 miles to Burnham.

Another warm day that started really quietly with mostly following wind.

We briefly transferred Dick to a yacht moored in the river from where he made a series of magnificent photo's, for the first time with our jackyard topsail up!

Photo courtesy of Dick Durham.

Photo courtesy of Dick Durham.

Photo courtesy of Dick Durham.

With the help of Dick's local knowledge (he used to crew a Thames barge on these waters!) we took with a comfortable feeling the shortcut through the Spitway and sailed with all sails up into the Crouch and right past the jetty where Anthony was waiting with his son and friend.

Taking Anthony on board for the short final ride to the Marina was an emotional moment.

After two days of Burnham, and before a lot more wind was coming in, we left Sunday early morning for Breskens. When hoisting the mainsail the double halyard block broke and we extra-carefully used the smaller topsail halyard instead and kept one reef in the sail.

After some hours the wind increased up to more than 30 knots and we had a lengthy and uncomfortably wet journey with several hours of motoring. Arrived just past midnight in Breskens. And up the river to Antwerp the next early morning.