Long Sand swatchway just north of London Array

I think we had a thread one or two years back Colin, perhaps that was the 2016 that prompted the note. I think they were inconclusive and at the time had got worse. Short cut to the Netherlands?
 
Pretty sure that's where we ran aground a couple of years ago - I think the latest chart says "less water reported" or words to that effect - that was me doing the reporting. Stuck to Foulgers since.
 
We were aiming (and from the track on the chart plotter we were where we should have been) to cross where the 2m contour allows - ie there should have been at least 2m all the way across the gat. We ran aground and were stuck for about 1/2hr until the tide lifted us off - called the coastguard to let them know we were there and just waited. Would be v surprised and not a little embarrassed if they named anything for us - certainly that's the first I ever heard of the idea!
 
Marmalade said:
Would be v surprised and not a little embarrassed if they named anything for us - certainly that's the first I ever heard of the idea!
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I was sure the suggestion had been made on this forum at some time, so had a hunt and found that indeed it had been, but by me! :o And in a thread I had no recollection of contributing to, let alone starting! http://www.ybw.com/forums/showthread.php?505152-Long-Sand-crossing-to-north-of-wind-farm

I still think it's a good idea, and I will refer to it as Marmalade Gat, even if nobody else does. :D
 
LittleSister said:
I still think it's a good idea, and I will refer to it as Marmalade Gat, even if nobody else does. :D
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Bearing in mind it has been there since long before the 70's (when I started bumping into the Longsands) & considering all the work a certain forumite has done on navigation in the Thames estuary for the average yachtsman: I would suggest "Tiller's Gat" would be a winner if we had a pole to decide on names.

About time it had one, because the way gaps are slowly moving north from the 2 Edingburgh channels, then Fishermans, to Fulgers one day that swatchway may well be a major crossing point.
 
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You could follow the example of my then MLSC fellow club-members when I reported with enthusiasm on a gat that opened up in the Sunk. One member tried it and grounded, ending up with the the lifeboat coming out. After that it was known, with deliberate irony, as 'John's back passage'.
 
Daydream believer said:
considering all the work a certain forumite has done on navigation in the Thames estuary for the average yachtsman: I would suggest "Tiller's Gat" would be a winner if we had a pole to decide on names.
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I certainly agree in principal with honouring Roger/Tillergirl in such a way, but with no disrespect to Marmalade (who like the great explorers before him, suffered in revealing new, er, lands to the world) I think Roger deserves something grander than a minor gat with marginal and reducing depths.

'Gaspar's Gat' does have a certain ring to it, though, if we could identify somewhere suitable.
 
tillergirl certainly deserves a working safe passage to be named after him! this is a false gat! no name required and hopefully folk won't be tempted to venture through!
 
we draw 2m - but there should have been a good metre under the keel all the way across notwithstanding the fact that it was close to LW
 
I dug out the old charts last night; a particular 1930s and another of the 1950s. There was 2 fathoms (2.5 fathoms) back then; a very distinct swatch, indeed arguably a mile wide @ 1 fathom. But in the 1930s the Long Sand was much less substantial. Assuming the charts of the day were 'precise', the Long Sand Head has extended a mile longer to the north-east in the last 90 years. Foulger's not marked of course but there at 2 fathoms, Fisherman's Gat marked but then not buoyed as the Black Deep also wasn't. Indeed it was the early 1990s before Fisherman's got buoyed.

The recommended route from the Essex Rivers in the 30s was quite different - the Spitway 3 miles to the East, drops down the Middle Deep (also called the SW Reach, turn East into the Barrow swatch and then straight across the Barrow Deep and across at the Knock John - a convenient buoy, the T.H. No 1 BY VS, and then direct into the North Edinburgh Channel which is separated from the South Edinburgh Channel by the Shingles Patch - a err... patch of shingle with a quarter of a fathom over it.
 
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