Summer Cruise 2015 Day 8 - (Thu)

We had a narrow window of opportunity to escape Limehouse due to problems with the bottom lock gates leaking. This meant instead of the usual lock availability at almost all states of the tide, we had to go at 08:00 or not at all

So go we did, which suited us anyway as it was just before high water. We had Ron (Gitane) in company with us as he'd decided to stay put an extra night too due to the poor forecast for Wednesday

Heading downriver in much better weather we were able to enjoy the sights rather more

The view from the river of the Cutty Sark and Greenwich Hospital is marred by the rather ugly building housing, of all things, a "Nandos". Oh and the round building is the head of the shaft down to the Greenwich Foot Tunnel which I forgot to mention we walked through on our way back from the museum etc. on Tuesday

A small power station with a landing staithe caught my attention. Doubtless its just the sort of place my collier sailing relations would have been familiar with as they carried coal from the North East to London

(I haven't found any history for this place yet)


 Ron did the VHF duty with London VTS to obtain clearance through the barrier and we motored through as directed.

You don't get much chance to sail on the Thames trip but we both managed to get a lift for a while when a bit of breeze kicked up by setting our genoas but it didn't last above an hour or so. However, we were making better progress under motor than on the way up.

We'd discussed plans with Ron before departure and we were all minded to seek an anchorage off the Medway for the night

Ron called us up on the VHF and suggested he take the lead and show us a good spot a bit further up Stangate Creek off Slaughterhouse Point

I'm always happy to tap into a bit of "local" knowledge and the anchorage proved very satisfactory indeed

Once anchored, I inflated the flubber and rowed over to Gitane to invite Ron aboard Erbas for dinner later.

The invite accepted, at the agreed time, I picked Ron up (with the outboard this time, one lot of rowing a day is quite enough for me) and we enjoyed an excellent meal and a couple of drinks before I once again played at water taxis and delivered Ron back to Gitane

The sunset was glorious ...

PS. The anchorage was so good and the weather so nice we stayed put for the day on Friday generally bumbling about on a few maintenance tasks such as touching up the hull paintwork where it had been badly rubbed at Queenborough and sorting out a few things