I had intended to set off tomorrow, but I’m now going to go on Saturday as I have to wait for my c-map cartridge to arrive. The charts I had were just for the Thames and Medway, so I’ve had to spend some (too much) cash to buy the UK & Ireland cart – £160!
Still, that’s the chart worry out of my mind, unless the plotter gives up, I’m all good, and I know I should have paper backups, or indeed as primary charts (I prefer them to the tiny screen) but I simply cannot afford all the Imray portfolios that I’d need.
While I’ve been here in North Fambridge I’ve done more work on the boat, finishing jobs that didn’t get done upon leaving St Kat’s, which means I’ve not got two solar panels giving me a total of 40w, some of those white anti chafe tubes for the shrouds, an installed tiller pilot, and I’ve bought some seizing wire to stop the bottle screws from coming undone. Once is enough.
North Fambridge is in the middle of nowhere. I had a walk around the village today while waiting for the hourly train to Burnham-On-Crouch, and could not find single shop! Not even the token village corner shop with a few old onions and decade old tins of beans. Nothing.
It is a beautiful place though, I mean signs like this are just brilliant.
The ‘major’ road was this..
?
It fantastic, although without a car, it’s a bit of a pain. It’s roughly a two mile walk from the boat yard to the (deserted) train station, which is fine normally, but not when you’re carrying 10 liters of water, 2 liters of milk, and some tins of food back. My fingers are still tender from trying to grip that weight as I marched down the “major roads” 
It’s just a lovely part of the world. I think people tend to forget just how pretty parts of England are, insisting that you need to jump on a plane to find anything that takes you breath away, but it’s just not the case. Buy a little boat and bring it here, and you’ll see what I mean. I’ll try and capture some of it in video for the next youtube installment.
I’ll end this post with a picture of Kudu’s newfound symmetry.
Solar panels on Kudu
