Info on Windermere

[st599]

I'm going sailing with a few friends later in the year on Windermere. Does anyone have, or know where you can get a chart? Or, is it a case of stay 20m away from the shore and you'll be fine?

Also, does anyone have any comments on wind direction, i.e. westerly = large gusts etc.?

 

[machurley22]

Anyone will be along in a minute.

 

[davidbfox]

No charts but don't need one. It's pilotage so OS map is good. For sailing info contact warden's office who sell laminated map marking hazards, jetties etc. 015394 42753 .Wind mostly up or down the lake, not across. Your problem may be stopping anywhere. There are a few public jetties free for 4 hours pay overnight but mostly full at weekends. Nowhere much to anchor - can do it near shallow sloping fields but most of shore shelves deeply. So it's usually back to home base after a day's sailing.

Have to register your boat if it's got an engine.

 

[Lakesailor]

The shallows are marked mainly by clusters of red buoys (well they were red once) Often there is a circle of them surrounding a rock hazard with a post and inverted triangle on it. Some other areas the gaggle of buoys needs a bit of working out to see were the hazard is.
Yellow buoys in pairs mark channels here and there, mainly in Bowness Bay and between the shore and Ladyholme heading North.
The problem with the buoy system is that every time someone launches a bigger boat (we're up to a Hanse 53 footer at present) the Wardens go out and move the buoys around as they don't want some bloke with a big yacht whingeing because he clocked a rock. Beware, occasionally there are rocks very close to the surface with just one buoy marking them.

The shore can be quite shallow or quite deep close in and it changes as you move around the lake. You have to learn the shallow bits really.

Wind That's Windermere's great trick. There are predominantly Northerly or Southerly winds, sometimes Westerly and now and again Easterlies.
Northerlies are great in the North Basin (the lake is effectively cut in half) with quite a chop and white caps in F4. As you get up to Wray Castle gusts come down from the Langdale Valley in the West.
In the South Basin Southerlies are pretty steady and give a good sail. In the opposite basin to the wind things can be very up and down.

Westerlies are fairly consistent. Easterlies are ....erm........entertaining. A local yachtsman told me when I was toying with a spinnaker. "Don't fly it in an Easterly, it'll break your boat." The problem is the violent gusts that rush down off the fells and hit your boat but leave no clue on the water. Always accompanied by windshifts that can be more than 90 degrees, and then back again. Even in Bowness Bay as you sail past the Ship Inn there is a nasty blast that'll round you up if you don't spot it.

But whatever direction it is predominantly you will get lulls, gusts, shifts and then total 180 degree turns of direction. It really is possible to be sailing north close hauled hard over and see a boat heading south towards you doing exactly the same thing. Sometimes a racing fleet heading down on a mark get a complete wind shift and spend the next 10 minutes trying to even reach the buoy.

In short you'll do more tacking and sail trimming in a half-hour sail than in hours at sea. Which makes it great.

There are only public jetties at Fell Foot Park (south end) Ferry Nab (Wardens office and slipway) Bowness Bay, Millerground (north of Bowness) Waterhead (top of the lake) and Wray Castle West shore.
The rest are either Private or hotel or attraction owned for patrons.

You are not supposed to anchor overnight on the lake.
Some bays are restricted at nesting time. They are marked on the map the Warden will sell you. Get the laminated one.
Picking up vacant moorings is frowned on. Sod's Law says that the owner will come back as soon as you get the food out.
Are you hiring a boat or bringing your own?

 

[Neddie_Seagoon]

As others have said, you don't need a chart, although I do find the depth sounder on my boat invaluable. The Lake shelves quickly from the bank in most places, it often seems like you can reach out and touch the bank when you've still got 8M under the boat.

But here are the charts:

North Basin

South Basin


Best weather in my limited experience is W / NW, followed by Southerly. As LS says, anything easterly is likely to be really flukey, to the extent that I'm sometimes sailing with main sheet in hand and jib sheet turned once around the cleat and ready to slip quickly.

The channel between North & South basins is not wide and shallows to 2M at points, so care is required if you have a deep keel. Weekends, high days & holidays it is also saturated with hire robos & mobos to add a little extra challenge /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

Steve

 

[thepadd]

Good info there, thanks. looking to get our Sadler Seawych on Windermere in a few weeks time, so will get the chart and have a plan for our initial trials on this old but brought back to life beater.
Pity you cant anchor overnight, that would be cool, anchor off one of the islands, sink a few beers and pretend you are in the Med (who am I kidding)!

 

[oldmanofthehills]

Its shallow up by mouth of Rothay river at the Ambleside end as have run aground there. A better depth gauge would have been useful, but in my long ago lifting keeler I was complacent

 

[sealegsjim]

Good info there, thanks. looking to get our Sadler Seawych on Windermere in a few weeks time, so will get the chart and have a plan for our initial trials on this old but brought back to life beater.
Pity you cant anchor overnight, that would be cool, anchor off one of the islands, sink a few beers and pretend you are in the Med (who am I kidding)!

We often anchor overnight and so do many others

 

[Malo37]

I learned to sail on Windermere as a boy in a lovely little 10 ft Princess wooden dinghy with blue sails. The main thing I can recall is that is was sometimes possible to sail round in a circle without tacking such is the nature of the winds.

 

[Thistle]

Happy(?) memories of a dinghy regatta with typical fluky winds ... and a brief thunderstorm which had most of the fleet flattened in every direction imaginable. The hailstones were SORE! Five minutes later we were back to sailing in benign, but fluky, conditions. Expect the unexpected!

 

[Manic76]

Levels on Windermere are low at the moment it seems. Where will you be mooring?

 

[[3889]]

I once owned a boat that had been kept on Windermere and it had a quite detailed chart on board that looked like the work of an individual. More like an OS map than a chart in appearance but with comprehensive bathymetry and extensive information on shoreside facilities. From memory I'd guess the scale to be c. 1:5000. Unfortunately the chart went with the boat but a decent chart of the lake certainly exists.