40th Birthday and Derwent6 off it's mooring

With Storm Dennis looming up we made the decision to go down to Kent as we had a 40th Birthday party to go to..

We left early and knew we needed to get across the Dartford crossing before it was closed due to the strong winds coming.
We managed to get across at 12.30pm and had a good run, and we stayed at Terry's (Del's Stepmum) as they were away on holiday.. We could also check on Rosie the cat and chill for a bit as the winds picked up..

We went to the party at 8.00pm and Nicola was waiting at the door. She was so pleased to see us and it was nice to catch up with the family..
We have known Nicola since she was five and have been in touch ever since.. We can't believe she is forty, she also has a sister (Abbey) who is three and three quarters younger..

It was such a lovely party and gave us the chance to catch up with friends who were there..

Nicola is such a fun girl, and so are her friends, and we had a really great evening. Reminiscent of our party's back in the day, which Nicola used to go to!

 With the storm getting worse we decided to drive back that night and it was one of the best decisions we made.. Al drove, and we had an empty road, but as we got close to the marina we could see the worst of the storm had passed here.. As we pulled up to Derwent6 we could see something wasn't right as the bow had gone across and was touching the boat next to us.. The wind had pulled the front ring out of the pontoon and it had then snapped the stern ropes and got wedged between the boat and the pontoon..

The wind was still too strong to pull Derwent6 back, so we had no choice but to leave things as they were till the morning. All this was happening at 3.00am in the morning.. As you can imagine we didn't get much sleep with us banging against the boat alongside the next pontoon, so Del was up early as there was a slight lull in the storm. He managed to pull the boat back on the pontoon after a couple of attempts, and tie to the ring on the other side of the pontoon.

We then managed to fit a new rope on the stern and also fixed a centre rope to a ring we had which fitted between the wood panels..

 Phew we were secure again, so lets hope the pontoon holds up.. The guys next to us won't be happy as we had damaged their new blacking, but it was just a bit of paint..

We went back to bed and woke up at 1.30pm, it felt like we had jet lag..