Sunday morning we woke up early, and after an hour drive we arrived to Southwold, to the kiosk of the Coastal Voyager.
There were grey clouds around, and the weather was quite chilly too, which was a pity.
At 9:15 we started dressing up into waterproof clothing, and around 9:30 we were fully ready for the adventure.
Luckily we could get into the first two seats again of the front row, so everything was given for a hell of a good ride.
While we were dressing up, the owner/captain, informed us, that we had northerly wind on the sea and the tide was coming in from the south, so because of this opposite movement, the sea can get quite rough for the boat.
No one thought this will be THAT ROUGH. As we left the "marina", which was saving us from the huge waves of the sea, our boat was attacked by the raging sea.
How did we feel? Like sitting on a roller-coaster. Waves were coming towards us, with meters high, and our inflatable speedboat was climbing each waves, and falling down at the end of it.
You could hear the blunt sound, when the boat hit the water again, and instantly you could see an even bigger body of water in front of you to climb.
Our guide, the captain was reducing the speed from 25 knots, to 20, then from 20 knots, to 10, but it still was not enough. At 10 knot, it would have taken us to reach the windfarms in 3 hours, which was the whole journey time.
With reduced speed, our boat had to "climb over" every waves, which was a great fun for me, on the other hand Mrs. Smith did not feel well, and was scared.
We were fighting against the waves for some time, when the captain walked accross the boat to us, and told the passengers we had to return back to the base and cancel our trip.
As he said, the waves were getting bigger, because of the opposite wind/tide effect, and in many cases when we were falling down at the end of each wave, we lost horizon (did not see the horizon, because of the high waves around us), which was the sign, we can not risk of falling over.
So we turned around, and went back to the marina. The journey back was very quick and easy, as riding along with the waves are always smooth. On the way back we saw boats were leaving the marina, and they also had to fight with the elements. (One of the sailing boat came back as well)
After giving back the waterproof clothing, they gave us full refund, and a cup of hot chocolate, which was really nice of them. We were quite disappointed because of the cancellation, however understood, they just did not want to risk anything.
They will go for another trip in 2 weeks, hopefully we will be able to go again, and the weather will be better.
Apart from the cancellation we could have a nice 40 minutes ride on the raging North Sea for FREE, so at the end it was a great fun for us.
