NB Fruit of The Vine: !! We Made It!!

3:45am and the alarm goes off as the low level bridge swings at 5am so that we can get into Sharpness lock. A quick shower and a cup of tea and we are ready to pick up our pilot Rick. The huge lock gates open and there is no going back now! We pass the long wooden pierhead an hour before HW and we immediately hug the coast in order to minimise the effect of the incoming tide. 1900rpm and 2mph! Not a breath of wind and a mirror sea. What could be better after all of the weeks of preparation. After an hour we head out into mid channel in order to pick up the stream. Then, all of a sudden. a huge carpet of mist descends. We can't see a thing except for the blue sky above. The pilot has to work off waypoints on his GPS. Then, it slowly disperses and the first of the two Severn bridges appear in the distance. It seems to take an age to reach them but when we do the speed over the ground increases to 10.1mph and we pass over the shallows known as the Shoots; quite appropriate.
The turbulent waters behind us we pass the entrance to the River Avon at Avonmouth the pilot giving us instructions on how to enter it when we come to navigate it later on. It's not long before we approach the deep lock at Portishead marina where we wait for the next flood tide to zing us up the R Avon into Bristol. The marina is a fabulous creation and just like being in the Mediterranean! We lock back down to sea level at 2pm and make the short hop across to the mouth of the R Avon after calling up the port authority on the VHF to make sure no commercial traffic was coming out of Portbury. Under the M5 motorway bridge and past the Powder House where, in days gone by, the wooden sailing ships would offload their gunpowder save any accidents when moored in the very busy Bristol docks!
What a sight to see Brunel's famous suspension bridge as we pass underneath it. As we approach the lock into Bristol the lights are red and out pops a flotilla of boats closely followed by the replica of John Cabot's wooden square rigger, the Matthew.
In the lock we go, along with NB Daedalus who we locked out of Sharpness with, only to be told by the harbourmaster that the level of water in Bristol's floating harbour was low and that we would have to wait one and a half hours for the tide to reach the level of the docks, As we were breasted up against Daedalus, we all sat on her tug deck eating ice creams that they kindly produced from their freezer. Thank you Simon and Pat.
At 6:30pm we finally moored up on the newly installed finger pontoons opposite Brunel's other famous creation the SS Great Britain. Then the onslaught began! We had sent out a mass Email to all our friends in Bristol to come and visit us in the docks. After many bottles of beer, wine and champagne, we finally got to bed at 11:30pm.
Phew, what a day to be remembered.