Festival

Monday 22nd July and the Bristol Harbour festival is now behind us as we prepare for our departure early Tuesday morning.

We are just about recovered from the 3 days of busy festivities. The festival started Friday evening but we had moored up on the festival moorings on Thursday. The locals who moor here certainly know how to party with music, drinking and dancing till late on Thursday  and Friday but Saturday saw them a little more jaded as hangovers took over! 

      A busy harbourside on Friday eve

During Friday evening we were treated to a display of hot air balloons passing over the concert arena.

There were some great shows on the three stages around the harbourside, particular favourites for us were the Old Time Sailors, a 20 piece band singing shanties and othe sea related songs. Another entertaining band were the 4 guys known as Piratitude, a good laugh on a slightly rainy Saturday eve. 

      Piratitude in action

On the water there were the usual displays of daring from the fly board man who uses the jets of water from a jet ski and diverts them to a board and boots that lifts him to about 20 meters in the air at which he does somersaults and dives into the water.

The pyranaut, an old fire fighting boat built especially for Bristol , gave an impressive display both opening and closing this years festival. The Pyronaut had been used to help extinguish fires during the Bristol Blitz. 

    The Pyronaut in action

The weather was much kinder than last year with very warm days Thursday and Friday, some rain on Saturday but not enough to dampen spirits, Sunday saw a return to warm sunshine in the afternoon.

Sunday also started out as one of those days, the starboard battery bank failed overnight and Lucia, who had been suffering pain in her lower leg developed cellulitis, thankfully Vicky was on hand to sort out Lucia and on Monday morning I purchased and fitted a new set of batteries.

Today (Monday) is being spent preparing for our return trip to Cardiff. 

High water for our departure coincides with a spring tide and also the usual weekday bridge embargo time of 0730 to 0900. This complicates things as we will have to pass through the lower bridge at 7am, we would normally then wait in the basin before the higher bridge but because of the height of the spring tide the flood gates will be closed. This is done to protect the water levels in the main harbour, however on the out bound side of the gates the lock will be left open. The high tide means we would not have enough clearance to pass under the higher bridge until the tide drops to the level of the harbour.

Because of the embargo on opening the bridge during this time we would not be able to leave until a couple of hours after high tide. We don't want to do this because there would not be sufficient depth on our arrival in Cardiff.

I rang the lock keepers to enquire if there was anyway to resolve this issue. They suggested we we into the lock before the flood gates are closed and wait in the lock. This is not normally allowed but they agreed to allow us to wait there so long as we keep a watch on the ropes.

So early night tonight after completing all our engine checks etc. Forecast looks OK so fingers crossed.