Sailing across the Thames Estuary…

For our first passage on this journey, we sailed across the Thames Estuary from Ipswich to Ramsgate. It was our first experience with open-water sailing of this nature, and what an experience it turned into!

You’ll have to pardon the light number of photos, a few other things consumed my time – like sailing! – and it got dark, of course, at 3:45pm as it does this time of year:

The first few hours of the day was in extraordinarily thick fog. Complete white-out, actually. For these first hours in my ship’s log, I believe I might have written in the “Visibility” category: none. Navigating barely buoy to buoy, we made our way down the River Orwell to Harwich. In the Harwich Harbor, we raised both sails and began our sail south.

Of course, navigating the Thames Delta is no brief glance, and, with a North-ish wind at about 10kts, we headed towards the south. We headed slightly east to avoid the constantly shifting sands, passing by Roughs Tower (or the Principality of Sealand) and just at the boundaries of the Sunk Precautionary Area where the not-so-aptly named Sunk Lightship sits in the center of one of the world’s largest roundabouts.

Imagine a roundabout that is so big that 300 meter container ships must make their way around: that’s the Sunk Precautionary Area.

Anyways, so around lunchtime, we caught the southbound current. It was like being on a conveyor belt. At one point, we topped 9kts over the ground. This conveyor belt was not to last. The sky got darker and darker and so did the tide. By the time we reached the Thanet Wind Farm – just a few hundred meters away – it was completely dark and the tide was setting against us. The wind farm looked light a giant city in the water, blinking all manner of lights.

We had been on one reef in the main for a while with sustained winds in the lower 20’s, but when the gusts started hitting 30kts and the following seas moved around to the starboard quarter, we went to a second reef and took in the headsail further.

Lynn had been feeling a bit under the weather just at dark and had gone below to lay down. She says she dozed off. When she awoke, she said she thought all hell had broken loose… the clothes that usually hang on the door were swinging wildly back and forth. The following seas and the winds were making for quite a rough ride.

As we approached Ramsgate and got within a mile of the coast, the wind slacked and the rolling eased and, though we were still against an almost 2kts current, we were still powering along at over 5kts. We came into the Ramsgate Harbour, moored, and slept.

The Subsequent Days

I’m sitting now at the galley table, feeling all warm and cozy. Outside, though, I’m listening to gale winds howl in the rigging and rock us back and forth with the substantial sea swell coming through the mouth of the harbour. The mooring lines catch us from the wind’s mindless shoves and the lines growl sharply on the cleats.

You might not think anything is out of the ordinary at all from the evidence in this photo. Only the wetness outside the window at the top right might give away that there is a serious storm outside. We’re hearing vessel traffic in the English Channel and pilots are delayed until the worst of the Force 8 winds burn themselves out.

We will stay hunkered down in the Ramsgate Harbour for another 24hrs or so and wait for the seas to chill. Because the sea has a good memory of the violence that is thrown across its surface.

Brighton is next. I hope you’ll stay tuned…