Deben and Ore Entrances

Great picture. I was going to ask at what state of tide it was taken until I saw it says LW on the pic. - I would not have guessed it was LW. 0.4m above CD at 7:27 Woodbridge Haven, 0.3m above CD at Harwich. The Knoll Spit really has become a lot lower.
 
Very interesting, thanks for posting. We are planning to come round this weekend which will be the first time for a couple of years, be nice to see the Deben and Woodbridge again.
 
A recent Ariel video here of the Deben entrance at low water. I hope this useful aspect of drones helps to offset some of the negative press they seem to get

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWvSf-SMm8w

That is superb, thanks so much.

It's really interesting to see the change in the state of the water breaking at the edges of the sandbanks. The footage really shows this in great detail.

One question, when leaving the river, between Knoll Spit and West Knoll there is a lot of turbulence to starboard and what appears to be an area of calmer water to port.
Looking at the chart, I couldn't make out if this area of calmer water was safe to use, see attached.

Screen Shot 2018-05-02 at 19.58.06.jpg
 
We exited on Sunday morning. LW Harwich 09:51, HW Harwich 16:29. At 12:40 we saw a minimum of 1.8m adjacent to Knoll Spit. Predicted at Harwich at that time was 1.9m, and if I remember correctly the live tide data for Harwich was showing 0.1m over predicted.

We felt a bit sorry for the boat parked on top of one of the knolls - sorry enough for me not to take a picture.
 
We felt a bit sorry for the boat parked on top of one of the knolls - sorry enough for me not to take a picture.

Stolen off facebook:

41251188724_60a4d0028c_b.jpg
 
The chart says "Depths are for low water spring tide as at 18th April 2018" - does this mean they have not been reduced to CD?

The predicted LW heights at Woodbridge Haven on that day were 0.4m (7:27) and 0.5m (20:30). Data at http://www.ntslf.org/data/realtime?port=Harwich&from=20180418&span=4 shows the actual height being maybe 0.05-0.1m over prediction. So if those depths are not reduced to CD then there is a drying height of 0.2-0.3m? at Knoll Spit at CD?
 
Looks like it, thanks for pointing that out. John must have been walking to measure that! With 1.6m draft I'll stick to the 'not before half flood rule'.
 
Looks like it, thanks for pointing that out. John must have been walking to measure that! With 1.6m draft I'll stick to the 'not before half flood rule'.

Works well for a lot of ports around these parts, and has done for the 50 odd years I've been sailing these waters, despite some fairly large changes in the actual depths and location of the best water. I'm a fan of simple rules ... as long as they actually work.

Peter.
 
The chart says "Depths are for low water spring tide as at 18th April 2018" - does this mean they have not been reduced to CD?

The predicted LW heights at Woodbridge Haven on that day were 0.4m (7:27) and 0.5m (20:30). Data at http://www.ntslf.org/data/realtime?port=Harwich&from=20180418&span=4 shows the actual height being maybe 0.05-0.1m over prediction. So if those depths are not reduced to CD then there is a drying height of 0.2-0.3m? at Knoll Spit at CD?

That might explain my problem when I left 2 hours into the ebb on 1st May, Calculated height of the tide was 2.6 metres to which I fondly added 0.5 metres of depth at chart datum. The minimum depth I recorded was 2.4 metres - or 2.5 metres as a steady state reading. I made a video of the passage but it was a bit bumpy and spray and hand shake reduced the clarity of the recording however you can see where the shallow bits were and shallowest of all was about 30 to 50 metres outbound from Knoll spit.

You need to watch the video full screen to be able to pick up the buoys and depth details.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pj9-E5p3hj4&feature=youtu.be
 
Top