Long Sand Head / Sunk area

[Dan Tribe]

We usually head to Holland via Ramsgate, Nieuwpoort etc. but this year hope to go direct Burnham to Ijmuiden.
It's been some years since I did this route, what's the recomended drill at LSH to Inner Gabbard?
Wait for a gap and go for it or keep well away?
Crew will be one old un [me] and 2 / 18 year olds, expert dinghy sailors but not much offshore experience.

 

[MoodySabre]

Not recommended so much as what I'd do (I'm doing Breskens from LSH so a bit easier). What the Sunk roundabout does is making it unclear which direction a ship might be going, although AIS might show its destination.

Personally I would head at something a bit more than 90deg from LSH and then go up the southern edge of the NE branch of the TSS towards N. Galloper and then head further north after that.

A few years ago we came back via Rotterdam. Blimey there's a lot of ships coming in and out of the Maas as well as several anchorages. "Interesting".

 

[Rafiki]

I find that roundabout damn confusing. You can see a ship, you can also see it on AIS, you know where you are, but really you have no clue which direction the ship is going to turn............... and that's in daylight !

 

[BoyBlue49]

I have not sailed to Ijmuiden for 10 years but i always headed along the coast to Orford Ness then turned direct for Ijmuiden. I doubt this is possible now. Last year I crossed to the Hook on the ferry, amazing the number of wind farms that have appeared in the last few years.