Crossing Thames Estuary

Daverw

Daverw

Well-Known Member
Joined
2 Nov 2016
Messages
3,050
Location
Hull
Visit site
We are currently Shotley getting ready to cross to Ramsgate, looking for a possible mid next week, will be single handed 30’ yacht, looking at many passage guides there are many options. What do local guys do to cross and a suggestion of route would be helpful
 
Of course, Crossing the Thames Estuary (book and website) by Roger Gaspar ('Tillergirl' of this parish) is the thing to have, and hours of fun can be had calculating the optimum timing, fastest trip etc.

In broad terms, I think the exact route doesn't make a lot of difference but the timing can. I generally go through the wind farm at Foulger's Gat, and aim to have the tide with me round North (and South) Foreland (especially if I'm continuing on to Dover), but I've usually been in a significantly smaller and therefore slower and more tide dependent boat than yours.

I'm sure others will be along soon to give their views and favourite routes/timings/tactics.

Have a good trip.

p.s. edited to correct which Foreland. (I'd forgotten which way is up!)
 
Last edited:
The windfarm is definitely my favourite (in daylight). The recommended path through (with three SWBs) looks tiny on the chart but seems super roomy in person. It can be hard to sight the next SWB as you start each of the two legs, so it's worth noting down the bearings to make sure you head down the correct "aisle" direction as you pass your mark until you've figured out the pattern of the masts. I think Gaspar or the ECP folks mention this somewhere, and they are right.

On our most recent transit, I was a little worried by the fact our mast (plus empennage) is now well over the 20m clearance that I believe UK farms guarantee between HAT and their rotor discs (internet: please correct me if I'm wrong about this). In practice, you'd have to get very close to the turbine masts for this to be a risk, and my understanding is that you'll get in trouble if you come within 50m anyway. Given that the marked route is ~600m wide, keeping clear is pretty easy.
 
It all depends how much water you need under the keel. I only draw 1 meter so I can take short cuts if the tide is right and the weather is right. If your a deep fin, perhaps needing 3+ meters to stay safe, best do your planning. East coast pilot shows several routes.
 
I always prefer Fishermans Gat. One can see where one is without chart plotters etc & the echo sounder & compass is one's friend.
Just sail down the Black deep looking out for shipping, Then when one sees the tower at the end of the wind farm, sail round it as if on a piece of string. Keep an eye on the sounder. Cross the Gat & look for the spit on the east end of the bank the other side & cross it , to give a position fix as the depth changes. Then head for N Foreland. Watching for shipping & listening on the correct VHF channel That can be busy & they come up fast.
I like to catch the LW as I cross the Sunk from Barrow No 2 ( Coming from Bradwell) so the tide gets me to Dover. But coming from Shotley & only going to Ramsgate I expect one could catch LW further N. Just needs a bit of calculation
 
Last edited:
The Little Sunk is about 3.5m at LW and makes the trip almost a straight line south. I always gave the old structure, now underwater, a clearance of about half a mile to avoid hitting it. I didn’t have have any difficulty going through the wind farm and managed not to hit anything.
 
Daydream believer said:
I always prefer Fishermans Gat. One can see where one is without chart plotters etc & the echo sounder & compass is one's friend.
Just sail down the Black deep looking out for shipping, Then when one sees the tower at the end of the wind farm, sail round it as if on a piece of string. Keep an eye on the sounder. Cross the Gat & look for the spit on the east end of the bank the other side & cross it , to give a position fix as the depth changes. Then head for N Foreland. Watching for shipping & listening on the correct VHF channel That can be busy & they come up fast.
I like to catch the LW as I cross the Sunk from Barrow No 2 ( Coming from Bradwell) so the tide gets me to Dover. But coming from Shotley & only going to Ramsgate I expect one could catch LW further N. Just needs a bit of calculation
Click to expand...
It was always said, before the advent of satellite navigation, if you could navigate the Thames estuary, with compass, paper chart, depth sounder and binoculars, you could navigate any where in the world.
 
shanemax said:
It was always said, before the advent of satellite navigation, if you could navigate the Thames estuary, with compass, paper chart, depth sounder and binoculars, you could navigate any where in the world.
Click to expand...
A task that was significantly easier with the navigation marks that used to be in place, especially in the north of the estuary. The current marks are all very small, whereas the old ones were large buoys intended for use by ships and were visible from miles off. The ones they have now are small enough that you have to be within a mile or so to spot them.
 
Daverw said:
What’s the options for anchoring before we set off, looking at Penny Hole Bay?
Click to expand...
I would assume you'll be leaving around LW, so you'll need a very shallow draft to anchor at Pennyhole Bay. For the same of 3 or 4 miles, i'd just leave a little earlier.

Route wise, subject to your draft and the state of tide it's basically a straight line from Landguard to North Foreland. Draw a line from 51° 47.4356' N 001° 24.3570' E to 51° 22.8354' N 001° 27.6254' E Check closely that it suits our draft and the state of tide and tweak as necessary.

We're going to Ramsgate on Friday for a few days, if you're still there, come over for a beer.
 
shanemax said:
It was always said, before the advent of satellite navigation, if you could navigate the Thames estuary, with compass, paper chart, depth sounder and binoculars, you could navigate any where in the world.
Click to expand...

It was very different back then.

I found it quite scary - you had to know exactly where you were, it seemed, miles from shore, to avoid ending up on a sandbank (which could be very dangerous), especially allowing for getting one's position wrong, engine breakdown or wind changes etc., when deep water was criss-crossed and immediately adjacent to very shallow, even sometimes drying, depths, and one minute you might be touching the bottom and the next you were scrambling to keep clear of a big ship bearing down on you fast. (There were more ships back then.)

But it was also a wonderfully mysterious and atmospheric place, especially in poor visibility, with strange structures - weird beacons (now mostly gone), forts, etc.- scattered about, and ships foghorns sounding.

Now you can see the lights of the wind farms, or the farms/turbines themselves, from tens of miles away, so you know just by looking roughly where you are, and a symbol on your plotter tells you with confidence exactly, not only approximately and without certainty, where you are, what's around, under and ahead of you, what your course direction and speed really are, and will even tell you what the tide is doing.

Part of it back then - hours of the whole crew at high anxiety - was my unfamiliarity with the place and its geography (though now I'm starting to get forgetful of it!), and my lack of confidence in my then new navigational skills and those of my sailing companions. (Had we calculated the tides and our estimated position correctly? Had we mistakenly identified that buoy or beacon?).

On one early trip a friend had one of those then new-fangled satellite navigation boxes (bought from his friend who'd salvaged it when he'd wrecked his boat running into the Azores!), and when it blinked to say it had found some satellites we'd wait anxiously while it spent 25 minutes calculating a lat/long for us to transfer to the chart to show where we'd been half an hour before, but most of the time after that anxious wait it would suddenly declare that it didn't have enough satellite fixes after all! In retrospect it was useless to us there, and a distraction from what we needed to be focusing on.
 
Last edited:
On a night passage the instructor asked us to look out for the lights of Felixstowe pier about 8 miles off. We were convinced we had found them, two red lights, but the instructor grinned and said it was a Chinese take a way and that every one on every course made the same mistake. You allowed more room for navigational errors in the 80s and steered clear of danger. Now you can sit on top of, and follow a zig-zagging 2 meter chart line and know its below you.
 
Last edited:
PaulRainbow said:
I would assume you'll be leaving around LW, so you'll need a very shallow draft to anchor at Pennyhole Bay. For the same of 3 or 4 miles, i'd just leave a little earlier.

Route wise, subject to your draft and the state of tide it's basically a straight line from Landguard to North Foreland. Draw a line from 51° 47.4356' N 001° 24.3570' E to 51° 22.8354' N 001° 27.6254' E Check closely that it suits our draft and the state of tide and tweak as necessary.

We're going to Ramsgate on Friday for a few days, if you're still there, come over for a beer.
Click to expand...
Thanks Paul, we were going tomorrow but have change plan and now looking at crossing next Thursday ish, just got into Ipswich Beacon for a few days to go home and back Tuesday,
If your still in Ramsgate will definitely call over to say hi.
 
Daverw said:
Thanks Paul, we were going tomorrow but have change plan and now looking at crossing next Thursday ish, just got into Ipswich Beacon for a few days to go home and back Tuesday,
If your still in Ramsgate will definitely call over to say hi.
Click to expand...
Let's hope the weather is better next week, it's not nice today. It's next Friday we're going, not this one, sorry should have been clearer. I'm at home base at the moment, in Ipswich Beacon. How are you getting home, train ?
 
PaulRainbow said:
Let's hope the weather is better next week, it's not nice today. It's next Friday we're going, not this one, sorry should have been clearer. I'm at home base at the moment, in Ipswich Beacon. How are you getting home, train ?
Click to expand...
That makes more sense, yes next week looks better ? That’s why we came up to Ipswich for a few days, going home by train Tomorrow lunchtime, would like to come and briefly say hi if you on board
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Share this page

Top