Rhetorical Question

[oldgit]

Why is the weather so foul on the East Coast ?
Every year our club cruise starts with trip to Burnham on Crouch.
There are only so many days you can sit in the cabin watching the sleet hit the windows and melt and spend hours discovering all the little gaps on the boat an Easterly wind can penetrate with the Eberspacher barely able to keep up.
The RCC summer cruises up the East Coast usually start with a freshening breeze off Sheerness causing salt water to find all the leaks in the boat before rendering the entire cruise weather bound in some semi industrial port for days.

The more experienced go somewhere sensible ie. St Kats, WID, Ramsgate or up the Thames, we return with tales of fun frolics and sunburn.
The East Coast fleet eventually give up return early with grumbles about hypothermia,blocked fuel filters and cabin fever. !

 

[John 32i]

Yes it's a miserable existence for a sailor...made worse by the fact that the only decent weather seems to be when I am at work!
And now it's nearly over for another year...

 

[johnalison]

This is the reverse of the truth. When I lived in Herts I had to drive for a couple of hours to the boat. It was very common to enjoy a lovely weekend on board and to drive home to be met with complaints that it had been raining all the time.

 

[John 32i]

To be fair we don't get that much rain true, just seems too much wind or not enough wind or just damn cold!
Hey we are never happy :disgust:

 

[Hydrozoan]

I read somewhere that the East Coast had the most favourable wind climate for sailing in the whole UK. Was it perhaps Charles Stock? He certainly pointed to the effect of its sandbanks in calming the after-effects of storms.

 

[johnalison]

I read somewhere that the East Coast had the most favourable wind climate for sailing in the whole UK. Was it perhaps Charles Stock? He certainly pointed to the effect of its sandbanks in calming the after-effects of storms.

I took one look at the Thames Estuary chart and could see at once that I needed a fin keel. If anyone wants to know what a dank and miserable summer cruise can be like, they should try the West Country. It's almost always awful, and on one occasion we spent about ten days on a pontoon up the Fal just for shelter.

 

[Triassic]

I took one look at the Thames Estuary chart and could see at once that I needed a fin keel.....

I'm curious, why a fin keel? I appreciate they might be easier to get off if you have an accidental grounding, but if you don't get off the consequences are worse....... Personally I've been grateful I have a daggerboard on more than one occasion!

 

[johnalison]

I'm curious, why a fin keel? I appreciate they might be easier to get off if you have an accidental grounding, but if you don't get off the consequences are worse....... Personally I've been grateful I have a daggerboard on more than one occasion!

Almost all the channels are orientated NE/SW, so 50% of the sailing is dead downwind and the other half upwind, so windward performance is worthwhile. As you say, a fin is usually easy to unground. There's a lot to be said for lifting keels, but there are also disadvantages and I've never owned one. Most of the current models are not particularly performance-orientated for upwind work. The Sadler 32 owned by a friend once was quite good.

In one of my paranoid phases I once analysed a year's sailing winds. My perception was that awkward winds predominated. I regard easy sailing as anywhere between 45 and 135 degrees from the wind which should in theory be 50% of the time. It was a long time ago, but I think that favourable winds accounted for less than half my sailing that year.

 

[PetiteFleur]

Why is the weather so foul on the East Coast ?
Every year our club cruise starts with trip to Burnham on Crouch.
There are only so many days you can sit in the cabin watching the sleet hit the windows and melt and spend hours discovering all the little gaps on the boat an Easterly wind can penetrate with the Eberspacher barely able to keep up.
The RCC summer cruises up the East Coast usually start with a freshening breeze off Sheerness causing salt water to find all the leaks in the boat before rendering the entire cruise weather bound in some semi industrial port for days.

The more experienced go somewhere sensible ie. St Kats, WID, Ramsgate or up the Thames, we return with tales of fun frolics and sunburn.
The East Coast fleet eventually give up return early with grumbles about hypothermia,blocked fuel filters and cabin fever. !

Nowhere as bad as the West Coast of Scotland in June this year! - went on a friends boat for a fortnight - it was COLD, WET and the wind always in the wrong direction! - only saved by the diesel heater in the evenings. And discovered my waterproofs are NOT waterproof! and it was a heatwave on the East Coast!
We had driven up in our motorhome and after drying out overnight once ashore, we drove to the East Coast for a week where it was dry, sunny and warm!

 

[oldgit]

Nowhere as bad as the West Coast of Scotland in June this year! - went on a friends boat for a fortnight - it was COLD, WET and the wind always in the wrong direction! - only saved by the diesel heater in the evenings. And discovered my waterproofs are NOT waterproof! and it was a heatwave on the East Coast!
We had driven up in our motorhome and after drying out overnight once ashore, we drove to the East Coast for a week where it was dry, sunny and warm!

and what about the wee bitey beasties ?

 

[Kurrawong_Kid]

I took one look at the Thames Estuary chart and could see at once that I needed a fin keel. If anyone wants to know what a dank and miserable summer cruise can be like, they should try the West Country. It's almost always awful, and on one occasion we spent about ten days on a pontoon up the Fal just for shelter.

+1

 

[PetiteFleur]

and what about the wee bitey beasties ?

Hardly any at all!

 

[Saguday]

Funnily enough, we nearly always found it dry warm and sunny whenever we headed out on the east coast, noticeably warmer and sunnier than in the west country where we live. So it was with considerable trepidation that we headed westwards last year and girded our loins for the inevitable soggy misery.

Inagine our disappointment, then, to have our two week August cruise from Plymouth to the Helford this summer ruined by blue skies, warm (dare I say, hot?) weather and unheard of favourable winds? Not one day ruined by rain! At times it was like being on the continent, it was quite intolerable. And there’s one other deeply unsettling aspect to sailing out west that they don’t tell you about in Tollesbury - the water! It’s blue green and you can see through it! Sometimes all the way to the bottom! It’s quite unsettling.

This thread has made me all nostalgic for an icey thrash up a lumpy Wallet with brown water as far as the eye can see, like proper water should be

 

[johnalison]

Funnily enough, we nearly always found it dry warm and sunny whenever we headed out on the east coast, noticeably warmer and sunnier than in the west country where we live. So it was with considerable trepidation that we headed westwards last year and girded our loins for the inevitable soggy misery.

Inagine our disappointment, then, to have our two week August cruise from Plymouth to the Helford this summer ruined by blue skies, warm (dare I say, hot?) weather and unheard of favourable winds? Not one day ruined by rain! At times it was like being on the continent, it was quite intolerable. And there’s one other deeply unsettling aspect to sailing out west that they don’t tell you about in Tollesbury - the water! It’s blue green and you can see through it! Sometimes all the way to the bottom! It’s quite unsettling.

This thread has made me all nostalgic for an icey thrash up a lumpy Wallet with brown water as far as the eye can see, like proper water should be

Commiserations on what was obviously an unsatisfactory cruise. You could have made things even worse by spending some time in the Isles of Scilly, as they like to say, when you might have encountered water close to ultraviolet on the spectrum. Contrary to popular opinion, not all the natives are cannibals, and some are actually quite friendly, more or less, though they talk funny.

 

[Gargleblaster]

I am not sure that Sir Cloudsley Shovell would agree with you that the natives of the Scillies were friendly. I don't think the person who cut off his finger to steal his ring ate it so perhaps not cannibals though.

 

[Kurrawong_Kid]

I took one look at the Thames Estuary chart and could see at once that I needed a fin keel. If anyone wants to know what a dank and miserable summer cruise can be like, they should try the West Country. It's almost always awful, and on one occasion we spent about ten days on a pontoon up the Fal just for shelter.

+1, but stuck in Plymouth!

 

[oldgit]

I am not sure that Sir Cloudsley Shovell would agree with you that the natives of the Scillies were friendly. I don't think the person who cut off his finger to steal his ring ate it so perhaps not cannibals though.

A vast portrait of Sir Cloudsley Shovell, which curiously does not depict in any way the destruction of his fleet and the tremendous loss of life in the Scillies, hangs proudly in the Guildhall at Rochester.
Did it not lead eventually to the development of the the Shipping Forecast ?

 

[AntarcticPilot]

A vast portrait of Sir Cloudsley Shovell, which curiously does not depict in any way the destruction of his fleet and the tremendous loss of life in the Scillies, hangs proudly in the Guildhall at Rochester.
Did it not lead eventually to the development of the the Shipping Forecast ?

No; it led to the development of means of determining Longitude - the Scilly disaster led directly to the formation of the Longitude Board, which promoted the development of both the astronomical lunar distance method and the Chronometer.
Basically, the shipwreck arose because the fleet's officers did not know their longitude, and thought they were further west than they were.

 

[Hydrozoan]

A vast portrait of Sir Cloudsley Shovell, which curiously does not depict in any way the destruction of his fleet and the tremendous loss of life in the Scillies, hangs proudly in the Guildhall at Rochester.
Did it not lead eventually to the development of the the Shipping Forecast ?

Not curious I think - the painting (attributed to Michael Dahl) appears to be dated 1702; Shovell was local MP and Guildhall benefactor I believe.

 

[oldgit]

No; it led to the development of means of determining Longitude - the Scilly disaster led directly to the formation of the Longitude Board, which promoted the development of both the astronomical lunar distance method and the Chronometer.
Basically, the shipwreck arose because the fleet's officers did not know their longitude, and thought they were further west than they were.

Absolutely correct, was it a ship wreck in Wales that led Fitzroy to getting the ball rolling. ?
No doubt you are well aware of the excellent book on the subject " Longtitude" and something along the same lines "The Map that changed the World."
Think the clocks at Greenwich are actually copies ?
A fascinating story.