Cruising – Thames Estuary
After 46 years and 149,000+ miles of sailing, which has included both the Arctic and Antarctica, and round the world, I still have never sailed up the Thames. This seemed a serious omission as well as having an air of romance about it. All I knew was that the Dutch had sailed into there in 1667 and decimated the English fleet. We could not do much about that, but we could at least ‘go and have a look’ as climbers say.
We duly set out from Dover. First black mark, the skipper got us up at 5am for a 5.30am start. We passed through the outer breakwater and second black mark, there was no wind. Now,, a 60ft aluminium schooner with a powerful aero-rig, also has a powerful engine, and the tide was with us. We continued at 8kts at the least up the coast past the Goodwin Sands to starboard towards the North Foreland, the darkness gradually giving way to daylight. Then as we rounded North Foreland into the beginnings of the wide Thames estuary, at last we began to get wind blowing down towards us from the River and we started to raise sail. This takes a little longer onas with this rig you have a jib and mainsail on both masts, tuned electrically by revolving the mast and boom
