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Tomahawk

Tomahawk

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Apopros, out the river for the first time, I have on board a well known stalwartfrom the West Coast ..

He is looking at the Thames Estuary with an expression of near terror.. All those sandbanks!
 
Which reminds me of my first crossing - you know Decca days and compasses and the North Edinburgh Channel. Twas pretty misty and we had reached crossing the Barrow Deep. Right in the middle of the Barrow Deep we could just see a pair of red and green laterals. I idly looks at the echo sounder - you know the whirling thingy thing but this was the modern one with the additional digital thingy. Idly looking down, the depth read 0.9m. Eek! Out of gear trying to work out where we thought we were (motoring, no wind at the time). Still reads 0.8/0.9m. But that looks like we are in the middle of the channel. Unless we have already missed the Deep and we are over the Sunk Sand and its one lateral we can see from the Barrow Deep and one from the Black Deep. No, no. That's silly, surely? Wouldn't we be seeing red first then green, not green then red. Silly, silly. So how come there is only 0.9m under us. Out with the long boathook - can't touch the bottom. Get out the lead line (let me know if anyone wants me to explain that), no bottom on this line. Hey, hey, the digital readout says 18m. Engage gear and off we go. Stop, stop, it's 0.9m again! Shame the vis is rubbish. Where are we? Decca flashing the 'I'm not registering'. Eek. Oh, oh, what we turn that knob on the whirly thing that says x6. Hey, it's says 20.6m! Wot a dork! And then 20m, bl**dy hell, that's deep enough to be dangerous.

Hey ho.
 
tillergirl said:
Which reminds me of my first crossing - you know Decca days and compasses and the North Edinburgh Channel. Twas pretty misty and we had reached crossing the Barrow Deep. Right in the middle of the Barrow Deep we could just see a pair of red and green laterals. I idly looks at the echo sounder - you know the whirling thingy thing but this was the modern one with the additional digital thingy. Idly looking down, the depth read 0.9m. Eek! Out of gear trying to work out where we thought we were (motoring, no wind at the time). Still reads 0.8/0.9m. But that looks like we are in the middle of the channel. Unless we have already missed the Deep and we are over the Sunk Sand and its one lateral we can see from the Barrow Deep and one from the Black Deep. No, no. That's silly, surely? Wouldn't we be seeing red first then green, not green then red. Silly, silly. So how come there is only 0.9m under us. Out with the long boathook - can't touch the bottom. Get out the lead line (let me know if anyone wants me to explain that), no bottom on this line. Hey, hey, the digital readout says 18m. Engage gear and off we go. Stop, stop, it's 0.9m again! Shame the vis is rubbish. Where are we? Decca flashing the 'I'm not registering'. Eek. Oh, oh, what we turn that knob on the whirly thing that says x6. Hey, it's says 20.6m! Wot a dork! And then 20m, bl**dy hell, that's deep enough to be dangerous.

Hey ho.
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Been there. Done that thing. More than once. Including trying to anchor in 26 fathoms with 23 fathoms of chain in the East Schelde...no windlass... It's amazing how badly a small boat sails with loads of chain hanging straight down and how much work is needed to get it back!
 
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Little Grebe said:
We are in the West Country right now, being able to see the bottom with a good 4m under the keel can be a bit unnerving!
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I can remember a St Ives Regatta, in the days before there was a Sailing club in the town, and watching in amazement as a crew thought he was in shallow water and leapt over the side in about 20' of water....
 
After a round the (Mersea) island race, in a Mirror, we came in roughly opposite Dabchicks. The foreshore was crowded, but there was a huge , derelict metal can buoy sunk in the mud, just offshore and just awash.

I stood on it and held the forestay of the boat while we waited for some space - the guy on the neighbouring boat thought I was on dry land, and leaped out - he went into 3 or 4 feet of water.:)
 
I remember my first few crossings of the Thames Estuary very well. It was such a different, spooky place then, not knowing exactly where you were, with big ships thundering past close on one side while ducks stood with their bodies clear of the water a few yards the other, and the place littered with a diverse assortment of bizarre structures large and small, and numerous tales told of the horrors that could befall a boat running onto a sandbank or worse.

My friend bought a secondhand satellite navigator, said to be the bees knees at the time, and we thought it would be the answer to all our problems. On our next trip across we got not untypically confused and nervous about where we were. The satellite navigator added to the tension by saying cryptic abbreviated words seeming to indicate that it was locking on to satellites. Hurrah, we thought. !0 minutes later, things getting much more seriously urgent, and it was still saying the same. After what seemed an age it seemed to be saying it was processing the data, thank goodness. Then it spent 25 minutes thinking about that before announcing that there were insufficient satellites. By the time it had done this a couple of times we were near enough to the Kent coast, and had survived our foolishness and lack of knowledge again.

Time and numerous longer trips revealed that the satellite navigator only very rarely got as far as producing a suggested position, and even then it was where we had been 25 minutes before - not much use in the Estuary at all.
 
I well remember our first venture across the Estuary from the Swale, 20 years ago, in our first yacht, a Hunter Horizon 26. In was in the Autumn, brisk weather, and it seemed I tended to only give charts and reference books a cursory glance. Well, I'd been racing dinghies for 40 years, I knew it all, didnt I......
Somehow we got to the Crouch in a F5-6, where we ran aground at Shore Ends. Well, I was on the stbd side if the river where I thought I should be. Wrong......
In the marina at Burnham, we were given a berth next to gleaming monster boats, our little salt-stained boat made us quite proud of what we'd done.
Later in the trip, going into Bradwell, got to the inner end of the first buoyed section, carried straight on. Wrong...... I did have a chart, I just didn't look at it properly.
The strange thing was, I already had a fair bit of experience skippering a 35' club boat, fully crewed, on the Solent and as far west as Weymouth, with a Coastal Kipper ticket as well.
My own wee boat, on the Thames Estuary, with just my long suffering wifey as crew, a very different kettle of poissons.
Happy to say I am somewhat wiser now, whilst never taking anything for granted.
 
Tomahawk said:
Oh and my crew from the West country has been introduced to the delights of sailing with .1m spare water.
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Fellow didn't take the gentle hint when one's several forays through the skerries of the Swedish Eastern Archipelago, cruise-camping in ( on? ) a dinghy-catamaran, were mentioned. Ankle-deep is fine.

And gentle ECF stalwarts wot confess interest in the perambulations of a fabled 'rat run' across the South West Sunk should confer with the Honourable Tom, 'cos he has some fresh coordinates which worked for him ( and a shy Apache type who followed ). Er, they worked for ONE side of his boat...... and he survived to tell the tale.....

Hint, hint! There are as yet no withies to guide budding Carrutherses.... One was tempted to use some spare sail battens!

"It was a cold, vaporous dawn, the glass rising, and the wind fallen to a light air still from the north-east. Our creased and sodden sails scarcely answered to it as we crept across the oily swell....."
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