Whitstable to Margate 27 09 10

I arrived at the Whitstable Sailing Club at about 1.30 pm, set the boat up on the shore, and drove off to Margate with the trailer, taking the train back. It was little odd being on the train with my life jacket and waterproof box.

Back at Whitstable at 4.00 pm I set off at the top of the tide, the sea calm and the light very poor. The tide caught me immediately and I quickly passed the Whitstable pier looking back in the gloom.

I settled into a steady rhythm and saw Whitstable passing into the distance. I had set the autopilot, which was working well. Without the autopilot I was used to making my own automatic adjustments to my course, so now I was now fighting against it, and had to relearn this habit. The sea was flat and glassy and I moved along steadily at over four miles per hour, speeding up to over five when the tide increased.

Soon I was opposite Herne Bay with the dilapidated pier head out to sea.

As I rowed on a number of seals tracked the boat, surfacing every so often. At one point I stopped to drink and a seal surfaced about fifty yards from the boat from different directions.

Soon I was at Reculver with the twin towers, remainder of the church built from the materials of the Roman fort, but largely demolished and moved inland in the 19^th Century, when it was at risk of being taken by the sea.

Opposite Reculver I could see the two buoys marking the narrow channel across west end of the Margate Hook Sand. I had crossed through this channel last Easter in and yacht and the depth had dropped to three feet on the echo sounder. Since doing the trip, this channel has been re-routed.

As the sun set I rowed on, the sails limp and Reculver receding into the distance.

I was at Margate towards eight o’clock in the dark. A swell had built up from the east and I nearly grounded on a ledge to the west of the harbour, with the swell steepening up and breaking. I found the entrance and realised the tide was out, but was confident of landing because I knew the harbour was hard sand. I was able to trolley the boat across the sand, through the harbour and up on to the Margate Pier.

Droit House with the Turner and Contemporary Arts Gallery (on another day)

By the pier there is a beautiful old building, Droit House, (the Margate Pier and Harbour Co.) dating from 1812. It is now the Turner and Contemporary Arts Gallery exhibiting artwork from international modern artists including local artist Tracey Emin. The idea behind this gallery is to celebrate the links that Margate has with the British impressionist artist, JMW Turner whose sketchbooks have innumerable images of Margate itself and who spent much of his life painting seascapes inspired by the coastal regions of East Kent.

Turner’s Old Margate Pier. The fishing barge is in the place where I landed, a bit easier for me I imagine.

Fifteen miles along the north Kent coast.

Whitstable to Faversham and back 18th September 2010

A previous trip from Whitstable had to be abandoned because it was too windy. I was able to launch to try out PicoMicroYacht in a rougher sea, but ensuring the wind was onshore and the tide flooding safely to the West. I rowed about half a mile up the coast and the trip was uneventful, apart from it being a little bouncy launching off the slipway.

On  a second occasion, the weather was mild and there was to be a fine evening. It took longer than I thought to drive to Whitstable and I arrived about six O’Clock to get ready. Originally I thought I would leave the boat at Faversham, drive to Whitstable with the car and trailer, take the train back to Faversham and go by boat to meet the car. But I couldn’t find an open launching slip sufficiently close to the station in Faversham to make it work, so gave up and drove to Whitstable to do a there and back trip.

Fortunately the wind had dropped and gone round to the north and despite the dramatic skies the weather was calm and the sea kindly.

I rigged PicoMicroyacht and there were  people around enjoying watching the sun setting towards the Isle of Sheppey. 

As I launched the sun set on the horizon, with beautiful prussian blues in the sea and sky

I set off heading across the Whitstable flats for the Sand End buoy in the far distance. The wind and sea was on the beam and I was moving along slowly as the light was fading. Initially I used back marker posts from the Whitstable harbour to keep my course.

There was a good view of the Whitstable sea front an also looking to the left Seasalter in the distance.

I got going and with the tide my speed increased to over 4 miles per hour. At about high tide there was no danger of disturbing the Oyster beds. I was now well over the base of the Pollard Spit and the light was fading fast.

Whistable Oyster beds. Whitstable is famous for oysters, with farming going back to Roman times. Oyster farming declined drastically after the war due to a combination of pollution, underinvestment and freak weather, but recently it has improved. However, Oyster stock has just declined again as written up in the telegraph in July ‘Visitors to Whitstable had a high old time at last weekend's oyster festival but local fishermen were in stormier mood, fearing the extinction of Pacific oyster stocks. The catch was down by 8,000 and John Bayes, who runs Seasalter Shellfish, an oyster farming company, and whose report of high death rates among his stocks to the Fish Health Inspectorate led to the herpes scare, fears "total wipe-out". He has been forced to cease oyster activity, "a massive blow" after recent investment which was to spark an export boom selling "millions of oysters". Recently,  oyster industry was worth £30 million and produced 14,000 tonnes of the things, 13,000 of which are the now threatened Pacific variety.’

Fortunately, there was a good moon, which came out behind the clouds and I knew there would be enough visibility As it got dark I settled into a rhythm making good progress, I could now see behind me the entrance to the Swale and to my left the lit buildings in front of the Graveney marshes. 

There was then a ‘thwack’ like bump followed by further ‘thwacks.’ A fish had jumped into the boat and was slapping around. Eventually I stopped and used sculling blade to scoop the fish back into the water.  

The moon guided me along and was using the lights in the distance.

It was now getting much darker now, with a red tinge on the horizon, the sky and sea an inky black colour

I was now was using the buoy lights to navigate, the Sands End buoy at the entrance to the Swale flashing green every five seconds and the Horse Sands outside Faversham every ten seconds. Soon I was in the Swale, with the sea much calmer and less wind. I had to be careful not to run into the Sands End buoy as I rowed along at over 4 miles per hour, my back turned. Very soon I was outside Faversham pausing to call home at just before 9 pm and eating my cream crackers. It was quite dark and difficult to see the entrance. The far side of the entrance loomed up in the dark quite suddenly with large black shape on the shore.

The camera battery failed and I decided to skirt along the shore on the way back, firstly past the Cleve marshes, hearing the waves hitting the shore line, then by the Graveney marshes with a succession of lit beach houses and finally Seasalter.

I found out later that the ‘Highball’ bouncing bomb, developed by Barnes Wallis was tested off the Seasalter beach, This bomb was to be used to attack shipping, the priority being the German battleship Tirpitz. Before release they were spun backwards at 700 to 900 revolutions per minute and were designed to be dropped from a maximum altitude of 60 ft (20 m) at an airspeed of 360 mph (600 km/h). A de Havilland Mosquito dropped the highball bomb prototype off Sea Salter – an image taken from a motion picture displayed in the Spitfire and Hurricane Memorial Museum, Manston in Kent.

The wind had dropped and I had the centreplate up so as not risk hitting the bottom and disturbing the Oyster beds. On the way I grazed past a spit just off the shore, just seeing a bank with the waves heaping up on the seaward part of the spit.

I arrive back at Whistable sooner than expected and was on the slipway at 10.45 pm, pleased with my voyage.

Faversham (Oare Creek) to Conyer Creek and back 31st July 2010

I had trouble finding a slipway to use in Oare Creek, but someone called Peter came to my rescue. I drove into what I thought was a boat park, but it was a set of private moorings and mud berths. I bumped into Peter wearing a blue boiler suit and mistakenly thought he was in charge, so I asked him where I could launch my boat. Very kindly he took me to his own private slipway. The different moorings were linked to strips of land coming off the creek, and Peter had his two boats shored up on his strip, a South African Yacht based on a fishing boat design, built in fibreglass, but looking like it could be wooden, and a fishing craft called La Diva. “I am so busy I haven’t managed to get launched this year. I really like it here - it is like being back in the 1950’s, it’s so peaceful”. As he drove off in his Volvo I got the boat ready and waited for the tide.

 Peter told me firmly I had only two hours of tide. I needed to get to Conyer and back and it seemed too far. To create more time I launched into the mud and stepped in, pushing the boat out over the mud with an oar. It was just after 3.00 pm, the high tide at 4.20 pm

Just prior to launching: Behind  the pico is the Dutch sloop I had seen near Kingsferry the previous voyage. Peter told me the owner finds it cheaper to keep it at Oare and commute from Amsterdam.


I set off down the creek and passed a number of interesting boats, including the Meeching tug being renovated in Oare Creek.

The Meeching was based for forty years in Newhaven on the South Coast, having belonged to British Rail and worked with the ferries, a main job being also to tow barges out to sea to dump dredging mud – A slight irony being that she ended up in Oare creek. The Meeching had more exciting adventures, as described by Andy Gilbert, the tug master’s son:  ‘October 1968 saw Meeching's most famous incident involving the Norwegian tanker Sitakund. She caught fire in the shipping lanes off Beachy Head after three large explosions in her tanks. While the Royal Navy frigate HMS Mohawk was warning all vessels to keep clear, and the famous Dutch salvage tug Zwarte Zee was making frantic radio calls offering her assistance, Meeching quietly slipped in and made fast. It was my Dad who made the radio call saying simply "We have taken the casualty in tow, by the stern and are proceeding towards Eastbourne bay". This stunned Mohawk's radio operator into silence for a few moments and you could hear the gulp in his voice when he responded with "Roger, wait, out!" The intention was to beach her off Pevensey, but towing a burning and sinking tanker is not an exact science! She eventually grounded on rocks off Eastbourne Promenade, prompting ridiculous comments from some of Eastbourne's councillors about her being deliberately placed there! For the next two days, Meeching led the fire fighting operations, along with the Dominant from Dover and personnel from Eastbourne Fire Brigade. Zwarte Zee did eventually turn up and, like Hermes, got too close. My Dad eventually called her up on VHF radio and threatened to turn high-pressure fire hoses on her if she didn't withdraw - she did!’ In 2000 the Meeching was decommissioned and languished in the Medway until someone decided to revive her.

(source: Andy Gilbert,  http://www.ournewhaven.org.uk/page_id__383_path__0p69p63p.aspx)

An old gaffer was motoring out, overtaking me. Towards the bottom of the creek was a prominently moored smack, CK 318.

The old gaffer passing me. Later on I got ahead of her as I skirted across the mudbanks and she was busy hoisting her sails. She passed me again later on.

Further down was a Colchester smack, theAlberta CK 318. This was built originally in 1885 and rebuilt in the Hollowshore (Testers’s) yard (behind). CK 318 is depicted in a stained glass window in St Mary’s Church Tollesbury. The glass was funded by a Tollesbury born New Yorker Fredrick Hasler who helped restore the church. He requested that CK 318 should be depicted in a window commemorating sailing in the area, with the instructions to the artist  “I wonder if you would mind making the smack CK 318. This was the 'Alberta' owned by a man named Pettican, who was my Congregational School Teacher when I lived in Tollesbury from 1893 to '96. . . . In 1900 I spent a two-week holiday on the 'Alberta' shrimping." A drawing of the window shows the smack on the bottom right.

Source: An article in Yachts and Yachting reproduced on http://www.smackdock.co.uk/church/church.htm

Out in the Swale the wind picked up again and it was obvious I was not going to be able row and sail, the boat heeling too much. So I concentrated on balancing the boat and taking photographs as I sailed past the Harty ferry landing.

Harty Ferry landing which can be reached along a bumpy track.

 Across the Swale was the Ferry Inn House, a white house on the hill.

Looking back I could see Whitstable in the distance behind a moored Thames spritsail barge

The wind got up further as I passed through the moorings. I was averaging over four knots as I sped up the Swale just with the two small sails. The wind got up further and spray was coming in over the bow, turning my cream crackers salty and soggy. Yachts were charging up and down, reaching along in the southerly wind.

I was worried I would run out of time to get to Conyer, but made the number 6 buoy opposite the entrance just ten minutes after high water.

The number 6 buoy with the entrance to Conyer Creek in the background.

On the way back the wind freshened up even further and I found myself using two hands to pull on the rudder lines to stop the boat luffing. The lines were chaffing my ankles as adjusted the rudder to stay on course. I shifted my weight to the side deck, keeping alert so as not to lose control. PicoMicroYacht surged up to six knots, occasionally surfing on the wavelets.

Nearing Faversham creek again I took down the sails. As I secured the sails and fixed the rudder in position for rowing, the wind and tide drifted me down towards the anchored Thames spritsail barge.

A strong wind was coming out of Faversham, so I settled down to a hard row up to Oare Creek.

Inside the Oare the wind moderated and I was able to row over the shallows, quickly reaching the slipway just in time. It was 5.50 pm, an hour and a half after high tide and I only just made it. I was able to push the boat over the mud using an oar, close enough to the slipway to tow the boat out with the car as in my previous voyage.




PicoMicroYacht on the Swale - filmed using an old mobile phone

 

Conyer Creek to Kingsferry and back 24th July 2010

Conyer Creek is  delightful place, with a sleepy boaty feel, somewhere you could go to relax and potter about or enjoy working on your boat for the day. I got ready in front of F76, a sailing fishing smack, the owners looking at me with discrete glances as they were working on the deck.

Drifting out lazily down the creek I could see more picturesque boats, including some houseboats. 

As I went round a bend, there were some teenagers swimming in the middle by their dinghy, so I slowed to avoid hitting them with my oars.

I was out of the creek at last and in the middle of the Swale, at high tide feeling like a large estuary. The wind was south west, against me.   In the distance was a Wanderer dinghy sailing up the Swale in the same direction and I kept up with them by rowing briskly.

It was taking a long time to get to the Kingsferry bridge and the tide was turning. Out of the corner of my eye I spotted a Thames barge motor sailing down towards me, on collision course, but she skirted round me. 

It was Greta, a Thames barge from Whitstable. Later on I read that it was built in the 19th Century on the East Coast. In the second world war it moved ammunition from a depot near Upnor in the Medway Estuary to naval vessels anchored in the Thames Estuary. Greta also took part in the evacuation of British soldiers at Dunkirk in 1940 and is the oldest active ‘Dunkirk’ little ship.

Later on I passed the Wanderer, as it had anchored near the shore, the couple having a picnic ashore. I would have liked to have joined them because they had an excellent landing place with a small hill to sit on, but I didn’t want to disturb their peace.

Up the Swale I started to pass the industrial bits.

The tide turned heavily against me and I had to row hard against the ebb. At the Kingsferry bridge I ate briefly, and turned round, speeding up to 4 knots, with the with the wind and tide behind me. A jet ski was racing around at high speed.

I turned back and rowed a mile downstream. A beautiful wooden Dutch sloop passed me and waved. 

I was soon back in Conyer Creek, at the slipway. But I realised I had left it too late, since the creek was just a stream and I was at the bottom of the slipway in the mud. I beached PicoMicroYacht and clambered up the muddy slipway with just enough grip to stop falling over.  To lighten things, I carried all the boat bits back to the car. I then pushed the trolley back down through the mud and heaved the PicoMicroYacht on to it. By joining up some ropes, I was able to attach it to the car and pull PicoMicroYacht out of the mud from a distance.

Everything was covered in mud and all I had was a milk carton to ladle water.

But the F76 owners, who had been discrete previously, came to my rescue and told me about a hose that was by another boat. 'It belongs to Fred ..... we’ll take the blame if they object. It’s a bit painful to watch you using that milk carton.’ 

Queenborough to Kingsferry Bridge 5th June 2010

I set off from the Queenborough hard at about 7.00 pm. I passed two sailors on their moorings and we chatted about my boat as I drifted up the Swale lazily on the tide.

The all tide hard in the background. Queenborough is a useful stop off place at the east mouth of the Swale, close to the Medway entrance. Originally Queenborough was a fortress guarding the Swale, under Edward III during the hundred years year war against the French. It was renamed after his wife Phillipa of Hainault. Now it is a mixture of a provincial town, an industrial base and somewhat run down but characterful place of historical interest.

At the long reach the wind headed and I started rowing keeping going all the way up to Kingsferry bridges. I was passed by some motor boats, all respectfully slowing down to reduce wash. When I got to the lifting bridge I was wary about going straight under and turned to row backwards, so I could see directly ahead checking the mast, although there was plenty of clearance.

Sailing dinghies capsizing to get under the Kingsferry bridge rather than wait for it to be opened - on another occasion

After passing a wharf I rested a while and then turned back. As I rowed back there was a great view of the bridges as they receded in the distance and behind me the setting sun. It was getting dark as I arrived at Queenborough just after 9.00 pm. I had timed the tides fairly well, the flood tide taking me up beyond the Kingsferry bridge and then slack water for the start of the return and an ebb tide to complete the journey.

The Medway Estuary 27th December 2009

The Medway has plenty of character, with the Medway towns such as Gillingham, Chatham and Rochester having a distinquished naval history. It is associated quintessentially with the novelist Charles Dickens, who appreciated the murky atmosphere with marshlands, mud and winter darkness. Likewise these features provided the setting for my journey.

I launched at Commodores Hard, which stretches out thinly into the estuary, with  soft mud at the end. Just off the hard was an old sailing boat, the same design as Ellen McArthur had used to circumnavigate the UK, looking somewhat forlorn.

The navigation buoys caught the light as I rowed on, with the large Napoleonic forts that protect the upper Medway in the distance.

The sun sank behind cloud, reappearing as an orange sunset reflecting off the water, ruffled by a light wind coming from the east. Large clouds of steam billowed out from power station chimneys, flattened in my direction by the east wind.  As I rowed steadily I could see the huge cranes on the jetty to the north and the marshes away to the south.

As I rowed onwards through a series of long reaches, wavelets built up with tide against wind and spray came over the bow with water draining out through the stern. Past Stangate Creek I could see high up above me Deadman’s Island, with stakes lining the entrance to Shepherd's Creek.  It is around this area that people were incarcerated in ships, either as convicts or in quarantine. Those that died were buried on Deadman's Island. The light was fading as I skirted round the island and up the Swale to Queenborough.

After a good supper it was dark as I set out for my return. I realised then the folly of being out in the Medway in the dark with no navigation lights and I look around nervously, keeping very close to Deadman’s island. I passed very close by a small fishing vessel  and I am sure he didn’t see me in the dark.

A previous night sail in a larger boat in the same estuary meant I knew the buoyage and was able to keep  on course. I glanced round and looked for the flashing of the buoys, checking their location on my map to stay orientated. I put on my wetsuit gloves, the temperature dropping well below zero, feathering my oars with stiff fingers.

Every so often I stood up to relieve a deadening feeling of my legs because of sitting for too long. I rowed for about five miles without seeing another moving boat, listening to oyster catchers as they circled over the mud flats. The tide had risen again and the hard at Gillingham
was half covered.