(Tuesday)
Tides would play a big part in our plans today. The gate at the entrance to the yacht basin at Walton is only open for an hour to an hour and a half either side of high water, the rest of the time it is closed to keep the water in the basin and the boats moored therein afloat!
So that meant a predicted start time of 11:30am BST. Happily, however, the gate was open by 11:00 and as soon as the initial rush of water through the narrow entrance subsided we lit up the engine and motored out of the basin at ten past the hour
It was already a glorious day with a moderate breeze from the East Nor'East, a clear blue sky and sunshine. It was on with the Factor 30 from the off - sunburn can spoil the day and we're very careful out on the water because the reflected UV can significantly increase the chances of burning
Motoring out of the backwaters with the wind virtually dead ahead we shot the narrows at Stone Point having to throttle back to idle speed for a few minutes to let two inbound yachts clear the channel first.
It's not difficult to do safely provided you "join the dots" of the buoys and stay firmly in the channel! You can see how the current eddies around although I had no problems maintaining our course. I would think twice about trying it at night or in rough weather though!
As soon as my nerves would stand it, and after hoisting the main whilst the wind still headed us, we made our turn to starboard to cross Pennyhole Bay towards the Naze. It was off with the engine now and sailing nicely on a beam reach
Clearing the Naze, we turned further to starbord onto a broad reach towards the end of Walton Pier. Once clear of the pier it was up with the spinnaker. Actually, in truth it took the best part of 40 minutes of faffing about to get the damn thing aloft and set. If it could go wrong, it did. In our defence, it's only the second time we've flown the kite on Erbas and sometimes things just don't quite go right! We did get it all sorted without any massive drama ...
And by 'eck once it was up and drawing did it ever make a difference! Our speed through the water went up from 3 to 4 knots to between 5 and 6 knots!
With up to two and a half knots of foul tide that was pretty critical to making the passage in good time. We even managed to (just) hold onto the kite through the Spitway where I perpretated a cunning ferry glide using the tide to keep the winf angle just wide enough to stop the spinnaker from collapsing.
That was much to be desired because once acoss the spitway we were back on a very broad reach to a run down the North side of the Swallowtail bank and into the river.
By the time the river banks closed in on either side of us, the sun had set, the wind was dropping (as it so often seems to do when the sun goes down) and night was rapidly overtaking us.
We snuffed and stowed the kite in the last light of dusk (discovering that we appear to have bent the spinnaker pole mast eye and jammed the pole end release - not sure how that has happened but I'll attent to it tomorrow)
Then it was on with the engine and a quick thrash round into the Brankfleet to drop anchor on the Eastern side of the channel. We normally anchor in the slight bay on the other side of the river but with an Easterly breeze we'd get a little more shelter on the Foulness side.
Dinner of All Day Breakfast with Beans was quickly warmed up on the stove and gobbled down just as rapidly! We settled down for the night after I'd run out plenty of chain and set an anchor drag alarm - big tides tonight.
We covered just under 32 miles in about 9 hours and 20 minutes. Realistically, we couldn't have sailed the first leg out of the backwaters, it would have been utter madness as there's simply no room to tack in the narrow channel and for most of the reach it's also full of moored craft.
The final stretch into the anchorage could have been sailed I suppose, if we'd been willing to spend another couple of hours faffing around in the dark! I think knot.
So all in all, apart from the difficulties with the spinnaker, which once up was worth all the bother, it was a most excellent sail. It was very satisfying to make the passage as planned.
Tides would play a big part in our plans today. The gate at the entrance to the yacht basin at Walton is only open for an hour to an hour and a half either side of high water, the rest of the time it is closed to keep the water in the basin and the boats moored therein afloat!
So that meant a predicted start time of 11:30am BST. Happily, however, the gate was open by 11:00 and as soon as the initial rush of water through the narrow entrance subsided we lit up the engine and motored out of the basin at ten past the hourIt was already a glorious day with a moderate breeze from the East Nor'East, a clear blue sky and sunshine. It was on with the Factor 30 from the off - sunburn can spoil the day and we're very careful out on the water because the reflected UV can significantly increase the chances of burning
Motoring out of the backwaters with the wind virtually dead ahead we shot the narrows at Stone Point having to throttle back to idle speed for a few minutes to let two inbound yachts clear the channel first.
It's not difficult to do safely provided you "join the dots" of the buoys and stay firmly in the channel! You can see how the current eddies around although I had no problems maintaining our course. I would think twice about trying it at night or in rough weather though!
As soon as my nerves would stand it, and after hoisting the main whilst the wind still headed us, we made our turn to starboard to cross Pennyhole Bay towards the Naze. It was off with the engine now and sailing nicely on a beam reach
Clearing the Naze, we turned further to starbord onto a broad reach towards the end of Walton Pier. Once clear of the pier it was up with the spinnaker. Actually, in truth it took the best part of 40 minutes of faffing about to get the damn thing aloft and set. If it could go wrong, it did. In our defence, it's only the second time we've flown the kite on Erbas and sometimes things just don't quite go right! We did get it all sorted without any massive drama ...
And by 'eck once it was up and drawing did it ever make a difference! Our speed through the water went up from 3 to 4 knots to between 5 and 6 knots!With up to two and a half knots of foul tide that was pretty critical to making the passage in good time. We even managed to (just) hold onto the kite through the Spitway where I perpretated a cunning ferry glide using the tide to keep the winf angle just wide enough to stop the spinnaker from collapsing.
That was much to be desired because once acoss the spitway we were back on a very broad reach to a run down the North side of the Swallowtail bank and into the river.
By the time the river banks closed in on either side of us, the sun had set, the wind was dropping (as it so often seems to do when the sun goes down) and night was rapidly overtaking us.
We snuffed and stowed the kite in the last light of dusk (discovering that we appear to have bent the spinnaker pole mast eye and jammed the pole end release - not sure how that has happened but I'll attent to it tomorrow)
Then it was on with the engine and a quick thrash round into the Brankfleet to drop anchor on the Eastern side of the channel. We normally anchor in the slight bay on the other side of the river but with an Easterly breeze we'd get a little more shelter on the Foulness side.
Dinner of All Day Breakfast with Beans was quickly warmed up on the stove and gobbled down just as rapidly! We settled down for the night after I'd run out plenty of chain and set an anchor drag alarm - big tides tonight.
We covered just under 32 miles in about 9 hours and 20 minutes. Realistically, we couldn't have sailed the first leg out of the backwaters, it would have been utter madness as there's simply no room to tack in the narrow channel and for most of the reach it's also full of moored craft.
The final stretch into the anchorage could have been sailed I suppose, if we'd been willing to spend another couple of hours faffing around in the dark! I think knot.
So all in all, apart from the difficulties with the spinnaker, which once up was worth all the bother, it was a most excellent sail. It was very satisfying to make the passage as planned.
Nice one Bru. :)
ReplyDeleteI've just worked out that our average speed (over the ground) for the passage was 3.42kts. Pretty damn good going with foul spring tides virtually the whole way!
Delete