DAY 2: 11 JUNE 2021
HARWICH TO FOLKESTONE: 52NM
Harty and I met as planned at 4.30am. The Pier Hotel in Harwich had kindly prepared a takeaway breakfast for us but we’d failed to anticipate the locked gate leading to the pontoon. Bugger! Not wanting to wait hours for the office to open, I scaled the 8ft gate, jumped down and buzzed Harty through.
Back aboard Summer Buoys, we stowed the covers and topped up the fuel and oil. The 115hp Evinrude E-Tec outboard on my boat is a high-tech two-stroke engine and the oil it burns is chuffin’ expensive! Being American, it comes as an American gallon (3.75 litres) and costs around £55. In a normal year, I’ll use just over one of these for the 30 to 40 engine hours I typically do. On that basis, I calculated I would need up to 15 litres of oil for the 100 engine hours it should take me to cover the 1900nm round Britain. To check my sums, I also contacted an Evinrude dealer, who reckoned two extra gallons on top of the 5 litres already in the tank would be fine. To be safe, I took three.
We were both wrong. By the end of day one we’d already used a gallon of the stuff and we still had ten days to go!
To be fair, in a normal season, I’m not constantly running at 4,000rpm or more and I only go out in calm conditions to avoid a mutiny from my wife and kids. In the lumpy seas we were now tackling, the engine was having to work considerably harder. I was going to need more oil. A lot more. No worries; I’d pick some up on the way round – there’s a chandlery every five yards on the south coast!
At 5am we slipped our lines and
