Visiting portershead

[Gwylan]

Thinking of visiting the marina in June for a few days. Anything I should be wary of when coming from up channel. Also ball park figure for 33ft yacht

Great place, nice people - we spent several years there before being posted to parts foreign.

Was a good marina and I only appreciate how well run now we have gone.
Though all the development must have taken a lot of the charm off the place.

The tides are the issue and you are generally only going in the direction of the tide. Being swept past the entrance by a falling tide is soul destroying, unless you meant to go to Cardiff anyway - but you'd better be quick or risk parking near the entrance there.

Wonder at the dates of some of the survey data on the charts, but also remember that you are losing or gaining about 2m of water per hour.
It pays to get your sums right if you are going to take some short cuts.

 

[chrishelen]

I berth in Portishead and I have to say I don't even know where Firefly Rock is (close to Firefly Buoy, obviously). So I imagine I've passed over it a few times.

In addition to what has already been said, I would add two points.

1. There is an old derelict wooden pier close to shore on the east side of the lock entrance. At higher states of tide part of it is (just) underwater. You really don't want to hit that, so look at the line of what you can see and project it out another 30m or so to guesstimate where the unseen bit is.

2. If you have to wait for a lock-in the easiest thing to do is to park your keel in the mud on the inside of the mudbank just east of the end of the pier. That way you have about 10 minutes before you float off again to furl the sails, put out the fenders, boil the kettle, etc without having to either go around in circles or worry where you're drifting to. (Don't do this on a falling tide!!!!)

I seem to remember sitting in a pool here at low tide last time I was in portishead in my old Eventide.