Solo around Sheppey
The Thames Estuary can be likened to an open hand. Its knuckles and fingers are the sandbanks, mudflats and coast fringes, whilst the gaps between them are the swatchways, rivers and creeks. Other obstacles include ruins and war relics, lifting or swinging road bridges and cramped fairways full of moored craft with no discernible channel. Byelaws prohibit entry to crucial stretches of water at certain times (for example, due to MOD missile firing), and of course there are the usual tidal windows for shallow rivers and creeks. The Isle of Sheppey is just 3.6 miles by 9 miles, yet to sail engineless
from one river to another can take some doing. In spite of this, I endeavoured to sail south from the River Blackwater to the Swale and circumnavigate the Isle of Sheppey in Kent, avoiding capture by the estuary at all costs!
My trip began with a wade in waist-deep water out to my 17ft wooden gaff-cutter, Shoal Waters, to catch the last of the ebb-tide streaming out of the creek. I skulled over millpond water to the Goldhanger spit buoy, hoping the wind would fill and take us to the bottom of the Blackwater by low water. From here, we could take the flood south, along the coast.
By lunchtime a helpful north-east breeze carried us down the Ray Sand Channel, where the average depth is 5ft on the edge of St Peters Flats. I slid into the Crouch soon after and was at Monkton Quay in the River Roach an hour later.
Havengore lifting bridge spans Havengore Creek from the mainland to Foulness Island. This creek is
