Sailing Vessel impeding Svitzer tug in Felixstowe Channel yesterday

TLouth7 said:
... I have never heard of a race starting in the channel (in the harbour or approaches), and in fact when racing you have to stay out of the channel (or at least pass outside the buoys). Further up the Orwell of course all the club lines stretch right across...
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I meant in the recommended yacht track off Harwich, and it was a long time ago - as I said, I have not encountered the like since, and perhaps I was mistaken and it was a race in progress which had not long started upriver.
 
From what I could see and hear on the day of the original incident, the Svitzer Shotley was engaged in manoeuvres prior to picking up a line from the stern of a container ship entering the harbour when the yacht passed close ahead. It was all dealt with in a professional and low key way by all parties, including the yacht whose eventual reply to the public rebuke passed down on C71 by Harwich VTS was appropriately contrite while representing the facts as he saw them. It must have quite spoiled his day (and it wasn’t me!)
 
Well if you see a tug setting up to tow then there is no excuse for getting in the way. I am sure though that the yacht merely misread the situation, and has learned from it (as have we all). It's easy to forget once you clear the breakwater that ships can still be involved in complex and unexpected manoeuvres.

In terms of races starting in the recommended yacht track, this absolutely happens, but then the track is not actually a channel in the conventional sense. Note the large number of lobster pots in the vicinity of Harwich Shelf, very much in the track.
 
TLouth7 said:
... In terms of races starting in the recommended yacht track, this absolutely happens, but then the track is not actually a channel in the conventional sense. Note the large number of lobster pots in the vicinity of Harwich Shelf, very much in the track.
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Thanks, and my apologies for referring to the ‘small ship channel’ rather than the ‘yacht track’. My experience was a long time ago and pretty much in the narrowest part of the track, and I can think of less disruptive places for a race start. If ‘custom and practice’ were claimed in defence of it, I would suggest that those deploying lobster pots in the track (frequently complained about) might perhaps claim the same. But as I have not encountered the like since, and as that area is now I think even narrower than it was, perhaps race organisers now sensibly avoid it.
 
Long before my time in yachting but in the 60s the RORC North Sea Race started from a line opposite the Pier Hotel and the first mark was Guard to Starboard!! I have seen photos in the Club archives of one such with all the fleet under spinnaker. A friend who used to crew offshore in those days said it could all get very noisy?
In any case in the present the Haven Series races regularly start from a line inside the breakwater and close to the yacht channel.
 
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Leighb said:
Long before my time in yachting but in the 60s the RORC North Sea Race started from a line opposite the Pier Hotel and the first mark was Guard to Starboard!! I have seen photos in the Club archives of one such with all the fleet under spinnaker. A friend who used to crew offshore in those days said it could all get very noisy��
In any case in the present the Haven Series races regularly start from a line inside the breakwater and close to the yacht channel.
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Even longer ago, the Big Class seem to have used that line from the Pier Hotel, it’s the only way that I can account for this picture, which seems to have been taken from roughly where the “viewing platform” now is. The photo is on page 171 of John Leather’s “The Northseamen.



You wouldn’t think there was room to tack a 23 metre or a J Class there. Pre- start manoeuvres, viewed from Halfpenny Pier, must have been “interesting!”
 
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The East Anglian Offshore Racing Association also used the same start line in the late 1960's and through the 1970's for the Harwich Ostend race. The pile up on Guard buoy frequently caused collisions with other yachts and the buoy, then protest meetings in Ostend.
 
Minn said:
You wouldn’t think there was room to tack a 23 metre or a J Class there. Pre- start manoeuvres, viewed from Halfpenny Pier, must have been “interesting!”
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That must have been some sight. We were told by the RHYC speaker that in early regattas the whole Harwich shore was lined with townsfolk who had turned out to watch. It is a pity that yachting and 'town' are now so disjunct.
 
Took this picture as recently as 2008, there were boats from the shipping channel to the North shelf, the start boat was in the middle of the yacht channel. Can't remember what race/regatta it was though. There were a lot more boats than there are in the picture, it was impossible to see a way through, so we took to the main channel and paused to watch. :ambivalence:
 

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In the early 80s there was a dinghy race (which attracted entries from many Essex/Suffolk clubs) titled the "3 Rivers Race" which started at the RHYC line, sailed down the Orwell, up the Stour a bit, then out through Harwich harbour and up the coast into the Deben, finishing at the Waldringfield SC line. I took part the first year it was held (in a 420), we were the first boat to arrive at Waldringfield. It seemed like quite an adventure. It didn't run for many years (possibly only 1 or 2), probably for the obvious safety concerns of having a large fleet of dinghies of different sizes & speeds racing out through the harbour and crossing the shipping channel!
 
Leighb said:
Long before my time in yachting but in the 60s the RORC North Sea Race started from a line opposite the Pier Hotel and the first mark was Guard to Starboard!! I have seen photos in the Club archives of one such with all the fleet under spinnaker. A friend who used to crew offshore in those days said it could all get very noisy��
In any case in the present the Haven Series races regularly start from a line inside the breakwater and close to the yacht channel.
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I was crewing in the Haven series ( Mercator Race ) in the mid 70s & the start line was off the Pr Hotel, mid 80s when i had my own boat entered it was off Harwich inside the breakwater as today
 
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