It’s an early start today: 3:30am wake up call for 4am watch. There’s already light in the sky and just after 5am there’s a beautiful red sunrise.
Mid morning on our way up the Bristol Channel the local coastguard helicopter swings by for some tall ship rescue practice: lots of us gather on the deck to watch the now familiar sight of a winch person coming down with a stretcher. (The RNLI have posted news and first person video footage from our real helicopter evacuation here: https://rnli.org/news-and-media/2021/may/26/tall-ship-mayday-for-newhaven-lifeboat)
Bristol is six miles inland, and we collect a pilot to guide the ship up the river Avon. Compared with the Scillys, this pilot actually has real work to do. As we head towards the M5 bridge it really looks like we’re going to be too tall to fit – the masts are about 30m high – but the professionals have done their tide checks properly and we pass safely underneath, albeit with what appears to be only a metre of clearance.
We drop the RIB in the water shortly before reaching the Clifton suspension bridge: it will be needed in place of a bow thruster to guide us into the right places through the locks and into the dock.
Coming into Bristol I’m on the bow as part of the mooring team, ready to haul and make fast mooring lines at first the Howard Lock and then later at the dock. The lock leads into the Cumberland Basin, where we wait for the Plimsoll Swing Bridge and Junction Swing Bridge. Then we travel into Prince’s wharf, seeing many historic ships and buildings.
We moor up in the Albion dock. But before we can go ashore there’s just one little hitch: our gang plank is too short to reach ashore, and the dock can’t find their longer gang plank. After an hour or so they do find it, but our position in the dock is such that they have to use an angle grinder to remove part of the railings.
In the evening several of us go for a drink at the Avon Packet pub, passing Banksy’s “Girl with a Pearl Earring” just outside the dock. It’s a fun evening, then I come back to the ship at closing time and chat over a civilised cup of midnight tea. I eventually go to bed at 1am. After having a few drinks and having being up for 21.5 hours I should probably feel tipsy and exhausted, but I actually feel sober and wide awake: maybe it’s the energy of being on board this exciting journey, and the knowledge that I’ll be home soon.
Good night!
