An interesting Circumnavigation...

[ex-Gladys]

In the delightful light airs of yesterday morning, the lady wife and I decided on a drift with the tide up to Osea, and as we got level with the end of the island, I mentioned that I'd never gone round the back over the causeway.

So a couple of interchanged later, and we turned to starboard, and headed towards the causeway. It was about an hour and a half before local HW, and it was only a 4.9m HW. Looking at my plotter, there was a drying height at the causeway of 2.7m, so I reckoned with out 1.5m draft we would have a min of 0.7 clearance.

Bearing in mind the spoil dumping that had occurred, as we approached, there was an indication of disturbed water slightly inshore of where I wanted to go, so we made to clear that and got a VERY brief flash of 0.9m, but stayed pretty constant at about 1.5 under the keel. Once over, there are a couple of "guts" that give good depths round the rest of the way.

 

[Cantata]

i remember a year or two ago we sailed downriver passing north of Osea and staying over the drying areas until almost opposite Bradwell. Because I could.....
1.2m draught.
Emerged the other end about half a mile ahead of friends on similar-speed boats who had left Heybridge with us, who seemed somewhat horrified at our antics when we next met.
The things we do for the book.....

 

[TangaraToo]

Always nice to do something different. Might try that next spring tide. I think 'light airs' is putting it nicely. All I was getting was movement from the tide, sails just acting as sun shades.

 

[DanTribe]

The only time I've done that was one one of the barge party trips from Maldon. A good experience but wouldn't fancy doing it with my 6ft draught.
Charlie Stock once showed a picture of a bilge keeler neatly parked on the causeway. He said that there was a heated argument between the skipper and a car driver. The boat skipper won the argument.

 

[Lucky Duck]

Maybe a circumnavigation of Northey Island next time?

 

[rudolph_hart]

Both Osea and Northey causeways are quite safe if done on springs - even with 6ft+ draft. Northey does have small boulders in some places, marking the edge of the causeway.

Going inside Thirslet spit is a good way of cheating a foul tide and getting flatter water when wind-over-tide. Just don't go between the two red buoys on the western end

 

[Lucky Duck]

A couple of season back - with two other boats - we circumnavigated Potton Island and ground to a temporary halt near Wakering Boat Yard pontoons, at that point I was starting to wonder if the attempt was entirely wise.