Cruising Advise for newbies

[sk16]

We are planning on putting a boat on the Thames and I'm looking for some information on how long it would take to get to certain places from Windsor for example (e.g. 2 days gets you to ...where ever...)

Any advise on where I can find this sort of information.

 

[boatone]

You can work it out pretty easily.

The Visit Thames Website has maps and gives distances between locks. A good rule of thumb is to take the distance between places in miles and add the number of locks, then divide by 4 to get a rough idea of how long it will take.

eg 20 miles with 4 locks = 24/4 = 6 hours. A lot will depend on how busy it is.

 

[Andrew_Fanner]

We sort of work in days, easy and hard.
eg
Sunbury - Windsor = easy day
Sumbury - Cookham = not quite a hard day but longer than easy
Windsor - Sonning = hard day
and so forth

Easy is <6hrs so don't have to get going early, can make a lunch stop and so forth. Hard is get started, limited lunch stop and >9 hours, be prepared to work locks yourself.

 

[ms1]

Andrew is dead right. It all depends on what your crusing looks like. There are those that start at 1000 and moor up at 1330, and others who like to crack on and burn the miles.
If you are asured of a mooring at your destination then you may feel better about cruising till late.

 

[Andrew_Fanner]

My approach is rather a legacy of narrowboat hiring in my yoinger days when 8 chaps shared a boat for a week. Some of the group simply saw the vessel as convenient transport from pub to pub, with manual labour thrown in. Some of us also had the attitude of "we have shelled out £x for this thing, so lest use it as much as possible"

Diglis to Gas Street* in a very long day is tough going after a serious session the night before. And involved the Tardebigge flight in slightly under 2 hours. I was so thristy when we made Brum I voluntarily drank in an Ansells pub.


*30 miles and 56 locks

 

[h4nym]

Hi SK

The best advice I've learnt over the year is never try to sail to a schedule! Having a boat on the river is not about how many miles you can do, it's all about the pubs you tie up to, the moorings that you decide to stay overnight at, and the people you meet along the way.

Don't be tempted to go planning too many days at the full 5 kts! There's something quite magical about life at 3mph!

H