Well Kept Secret, apparently.

[Normalfornorfolk]

How many people know that there is an excellent modern, sound, large, floating pontoon in the centre of Colchester? F.O.C!
It's a drying creek but the Council notice suggests it has water for most boats 1 1/2 hrs either side of HW but drying out is perfectly possible on soft mud. I sat there happily with 1.3m of keel down 2hrs before HW

A mile or so above Rowhedge you turn a corner and see the heavy piling on the LHS, the People's Republic of Essex (Uni) on the Rt and a huge pylon ahead. After a series of rotting & scrap-covered hippie-barges you'll see the old Colne lightship ahead. The pontoon which probably has room for 4 x 30 footers is just before the light vessel.
It has water and electricity tho I did not find out how the electric is accessed. There is a number in the E Cosat pilot for enquiries.
A modern local Co-Op is 100m away just before the bridge, there is a huge Tesco (sorry...) 10 mins walk away and B & Q etc even closer.

This is an excellent place to store, water or crewchange and should be more used. A liveaboard told me yachts virtually never visit even in summer so it sounds as if space is not often a problem.

It's on Google earth but not Google maps. 42m long.

 

[johnalison]

Is this you then, on Saturday?

 

[Lucky Duck]

Maldon has a similar pontoon but looking at it last weekend it appears to have silted up such that might be of little use to visiting yachts

 

[Normalfornorfolk]

No, that's not me but I'm clearly not the only one in on the secret!

 

[tillergirl]

Wot, like that:

P1040257 by Roger Gaspar, on Flickr

 

[Cantata]

How many people know that there is an excellent modern, sound, large, floating pontoon in the centre of Colchester? ......................

Er, everyone with a copy of the 4th edition of East Coast Pilot, published 2 years ago? :encouragement:

 

[Champagne Murphy]

Er, everyone with a copy of the 4th edition of East Coast Pilot, published 2 years ago? :encouragement:

 

[LittleSister]

How many people know. . . .

Thanks for the tip!

Er, everyone with a copy of the 4th edition of East Coast Pilot, published 2 years ago? :encouragement:

Thanks for the other tip!

 

[Normalfornorfolk]

Er, everyone with a copy of the 4th edition of East Coast Pilot, published 2 years ago? :encouragement:

Perhaps not everyone is so punctiliously up to date as that - and should be grateful for the errors of our ways to be so highlighted.

Pfff.

 

[Mandarin331]

Not so much a secret, rather that the hythe has become a scruffy dump at the top of a rapidly silting river with no navigational marks above Wivenhoe. I fear that the grand plans the council had stalled with the crash, I just hope something happens to make this a more welcoming destination before the top of the river ceases to become navigable.

By the way for the last few years Brightlingsea harbour have run river trips up to Colchester, calling at Wivenhoe and Rowhedge en route.

 

[ex-Gladys]

I bottled out a bit north of the Wivenhoe barrier last season, about an hour before hw on a decent spring. I live in Rowhedge and have often walked up to the Hythe.

The channel isn't obvious using normal observation.

 

[Cantata]

I've only been up there the once so far - the Colne was on Colin Jarman's patch at the time - but we found the gutway quite readily with a bit of meandering on the tiller. But then we only draw 1.2m so that may have improved my confidence level!
We thought it was indeed a sorry state of affairs up there, nice pontoon and not much else. Like other places, the situation would be so different if it was on the other side of the Channel. Still, we can live in hope.

 

[DanTribe]

Reminds me of a Kenny Everett sketch when he compared places with womens ages.
The final one was "...... is like a 80 year old, everyone knows where it is but no one wants to go there".

 

[Daydream believer]

The trouble with free moorings like that is that someone will dump a boat on it & walk away for 6 months.