River Crouch navigation
That cold December wind was a distant memory as I woke aboard miniature gaff cutter Shoal Waters on a steaming hot July morning. Summer had truly arrived and so too had the east wind.
We’d been dealt three weeks of it: north-east, south-east, east and anything coming from that way in between.
I’d boarded the night before with the weekend’s target destination North Fambridge area in the upper reaches of the River Crouch, the longest of the Essex rivers penetrating 19 miles inland to a visiting yacht’s navigable limit at Battlesbridge. And with that east wind and me being a cruising man there could be anything else on our journey in between.
The weather forecast began upright with a slight heel and followed the recent pattern: north-east veering south Force 3, becoming south-west 3 or 4.
I was away at 1310 with HW due at 1330. To join in favour with the last of the flooding tide I slipped round the west of Osea and popped into Lawling Creek where the tide turned and an obliging east wind drove us over it up to Harlow Blackwater SC jetty before spinning round again. Sailing out I counted six seals inside of Mundon Stone.
The trip down the Blackwater was livened up by gusting winds and the troughs it can kick up in anything over Force 3 wind over tide. By 1840 I had left the river when the wind backed north for a short
