Today was going to be a very busy day. My alarm woke me at half past midnight and I was driving away at 01:06 have got up, done my ablutions, fed the cats and the horse and made a coffee in an insulated travel mug. The trip down to West Mersea was uneventful and I stopped four times during the trip to check on Naiad and the trailer. As I had hoped everything stayed where it should have been and nothing fell off or broke.

We arrived at 03:25-ish and I set to in rigging Naiad. It was quiet and windless and I had the slip to myself that early in the morning. For the first 90 minutes or so I had to do everything by torchlight but eventually I had everything rigged and loaded.

This is the situation at 06:30, three hours after arriving. Naiad is rigged, the car is parked and I have retrieved the dinghy from the dinghy park.

I pushed Naiad on the trailer down to the water's edge but not into the water just yet. It's about 100m and quite hard work. It's not easy to see but there is a rise in the shingle just where the green band of seaweed is lying and getting Naiad over that bump was hard.

The dinghy was pushed down next and launched with the trailer being pulled up the beach about 50m. I also attached a long line to the trailer and laid that out up the beach so that I can retrieve the trailer once Naiad has floated.

The trailer was pushed back but I was a bit tired and allowed one of the wheels to go off the shingle and into the mud so instead of being able to float Naiad off the trailer immediately, I had to wait until the tide had come in a bit further. Once she had floated I used the dinghy to tow her out to a nearby vacant buoy, rowed back to the shore, pulled the trailer up the beach, retrieved the car and then took the car and trailer up to the club car park for the time being. Then it was back to the dinghy, row out to Naiad, reattached the tow rope and tow Naiad out to her mooring some 520m away against the tide and that was quite hard work piled on top of yesterday's hard work and this morning's hard work.

Naiad is on a new mooring about 50m down river from her old one so having reached the buoy and tied Naiad to it, I rowed back to the old mooring to retrieve the mooring ropes which were still attached. Then it was back to Naiad and attach the mooring lines to the new buoy and remove the tow rope. Finally it was get onboard Naiad and sort her out as much as I could.

Eventually, three hours after launching Naiad I was rowing away again and took the above photo.

But I still hadn't finished. I put the trailer back in the dinghy park, took the stuff I had returned from Naiad up to the car and stowed that, put on my shoes instead of boots, took the empty coffee mug and went back down to the Blackwater Café to refill the coffee, buy some snacks for the drive home and have breakfast. A double scoop of ice cream in a tub!!!

The trip home was also uneventful but by the time a arrived home and unpacked the car I could barely stand up from the fatigue.

I went to bed really early.

I didn't even stop for a cup of tea.