14 April 2012
The weather forecast was benign so
I set out a 8am and gentled motored out of Harwich on a beautiful but very cold
morning. A nice gentle Force 3
from the North/North East was supposed to push me a long at a nice comfortable
rate across the Thames Estuary.
The last time I sailed on the
Thames Estuary was as a 17 year old with a group of Senior Boy Scouts on the
Scout Masters Motor Sailer. I can
still remember how lumpy and uncomfortable the sea was in what I then thought
was a gale (from experience I now know that it was probably no more than a
Force 3!). When I started to look
at the navigation involved in crossing it was very clear that the shallow
water, moving sand banks, wind farms not to mention large ships (fortunately –
London is not as busy as it used to be!) made it challenging. If you look at a chart you would be
surprised how many shipwrecks there are in the estuary!
Fortunately Stuart was at the end
of a telephone and was able to reassure me that while he would be nervous the
chart plotter and George (for those of you who wonder who George is – it’s the
Autopilot). He (Stuart) then
proceeded to work out and download the route, with a number of options, for the
chart plotter.
Having motored out of the Harbour
I pulled the foresail out (I didn’t bother with the main as I would be
running before the wind) and as soon as I switched the engine off the speed decreased
to point I was travelling at 2 knots. As the channels are quite narrow
and the tidal flows variable due to the sand banks/shallows the logical thing
was to motor sail. Within 30
minutes the wind had disappeared so I got the sail down and just motored.
I passed places with like Sunk
Sand, Foulgers Gap, Gunfleet Sand, Black Deep Not to mention at least 2 huge
wind farms; one of which is under construction and has a guard ship to keep
people away. This decided that I
looked very suspicious and came over to warn me off. When he discovered I was heading for Ramsgate his whole
attitude changed.
Once I was through the worst the
wind picked up and I had a cracking sail for until I arrived off Ramsgate
The whole trip was a lot like
playing Rugby at fly half – dodging and jinking around all the obstructions but
at a much slower pace.
No comments:
Post a Comment