Nick, Tony, Sean, Liz, Jon (Eeeles), Rob (Scott), Greg & Justin.
Foggy preparations at Barton's Point.
This was our first club trip repeating the triangular course that Tony, Sean and I did back in July, except this time the tides dictated that we paddle anti-clockwise on the ebb rather than clockwise on the flood. It was either that or paddle at night (watch this space!). We planned to launch at highwater, 1215. The forecast was for very light easterly winds (F2-3) and possibly poor visibility to start with.
We met at Shadwell for 0900 and were away by 0930. The drive to our launch at Barton’s Point (just east of Sheerness on the Isle of Sheppey,) was an easy hour and a quarter, slowed only by mist, occasionally congealing to a pea-souper. Crossing the new high arching bridge onto the Isle of Sheppey the mist was gone and our expectations rose, but when we reached the coast we were back in the fog. We found the ramp up to the track along the top of the beach and parked close to Barton’s Point; visibility was around three hundred metres, beyond which everything merged into featureless grey. A foghorn sounded regularly somewhere to the east. Straight above us the sky was blue but the sun was a low opal disc with no wind to clear it. No bother, we had an hour and a half before our launch time.
Although I felt relaxed about paddling and navigating under these conditions we had to cross and re-cross two or three shipping lanes, being run down was a real threat. We continued our preparations, believing the fog would clear, but at 1200 it hadn’t so we used a mobile phone to speak to London VTS Woolwich, then VHF radio for the Thames sea reach VTS (Ch 69) and Medway VTS (Ch 74), whose approach channel we had to cross first. They couldn’t tell us when the fog would clear but said there was an outward-bound ship at Garrison Point. When quizzed they said it was moving at 7 knots. We could hear the ship’s horn away to our left; we calculated it should pass in about eighteen minutes. To save time we decided to launch and paddle towards the shipping channel, we’d use dead reckoning and a GPS waymark to tell us when to stop and wait for the ship to pass. By the time that was all organised we radioed again to check - the boat had already passed and we were fifteen minutes late. We could hear its horn ahead of us moving east. We pointed our bows towards 330 degrees and paddled out into the fog. Without the radio it would have been Russian roulette.
A welcome buoy.
Our navigational planning had been set during a brief Tuesday evening session during which, for simplicity’s sake, we had combined two adjacent tidal diamonds to draw our vector diagram. Jon had reworked the calculations more carefully at home, coming up with slightly different courses to steer, but we agreed to stick to our less refined plan to see how it worked. Between us we had 4 GPS devices; their ‘you are here’ capability was reassuring in the fog but they could also tell us how fast we were going and where we had been. If you’ve not paddled following a compass course worked out by using a vector diagram you might not appreciate what we were trying to do. It simply means we were following a compass course at a predicted speed, having calculated that the combined effect of that and the tidal stream would deliver us to our target; you point at A but you arrive at B. This counter intuitive process has its own drama and was accentuated by the fog, much of the time we could see neither A nor B!
So we set off unable to see the Essex shore. Buoys, big ships, sailing boats and a seal loomed up then melted away, but as we proceded the fog thinned and the sun eventually appeared. Buoys and the GPS confirmed that our planned course would not take us where we wanted to go. At that point we stopped paddling and let the GPS pinpoint our position and record the current’s speed and direction at that particular time – useful knowledge for future planning. The tide was considerably weaker than anticipated…partly our fault but also a limitation of tidal diamonds. As we were up-tide of our target the error was not crucial and we decided to continue on the set course until we reached the edge of the extensive shallows off Shoebury Ness (ascertained with a hand compass, by our being due east of a particular wreck) then simply head for the beach.
Essex ahoy! Shoebury Ness snack.
The presence of numerous jet skis didn’t spoil our lunch, which we ate in the sunshine, lounging against a south-facing sea wall. Five miles away the Kent coast was invisible, the estuary a sea. We re-planned our return leg using the tide speed recorded by the GPS on the way over and the 50%, 90% rule (which states the speed of the tide according to how many hours it is after slack water). It came out only two degrees different from the original plan. When we re-launched the tidal flow over the shallows was negligible so we headed straight for the end of Southend pier, the starting point for our return.
Straight for the pier... ...with oysters on.
Arriving there five minutes early we took a turn around it, looking at the anglers and tourists looking at us. It’s the only pier I’ve seen oysters attached to.
On our outward journey the sea had been disappointingly calm, but now the wind picked up a little and with wind over tide the sea became livelier. Once again our course (190 degrees) took us further up-tide than planned so we took a couple more GPS readings and made an estimated correction. The various buoys enabled us to fix our position even without the GPS and the tall chimney on the Isle of Grain was always there for a compass bearing. As we got close to, and then crossed, the Yantlet channel the current picked up noticeably and the GPS confirmed it was close to what we’d expected. Looking at the GPS record of our ground track afterwards, Tony noted that across the faster current our ground track pointed directly towards our destination (encouraging) and that elsewhere the tides speed was about half that of the main channel.
But it does mean what it says...
So, by hook and by crook we paddled towards the end of our trip. A mile and a half short of Barton’s Point we came across the three-masted wreck of the Richard Montgomery that we’d passed on the way out. Somehow we strayed in to the wreck’s exclusion zone and then lingered in its refuge as a huge ship colourfully piled with containers approached up the Medway channel.
As it passed we became aware of a high speed boat coming in our direction, the sort of high speed boat that suggests ‘Police’ or ‘Harbour Master’. This one had ‘Pilot’ on the side. It stopped and a tall man on the front deck beckoned me over…’Who’s in charge here?’ he asked. I wanted to point at someone else but it was a fair cop. He said we’d set off sensors and alarms and he’d been sent over to see what was going on. He was pleasant enough but we had been warned; the exclusion zone applies to all vessels, including ours. Somewhat chastened we paddled the last mile and a half back to Barton’s Point. The tide was out and the final walk offered a choice between indirect stony shore or direct mud. I made the wrong choice and when I corrected it the stony shore revealed itself as an extensive bed of large oysters.
So ended the second Thames triangle. During the exchange of emails that tends to follow the completion of such trip, when there is much yet to be resolved Rob commented on Tony’s GPS track of where we’d actually been, saying it looked a bit like a triangle, the sort his 4 year old draws. It’s a fair cop.
Pete, sorry you were unable to join us; see you next time!
Link to Tony’s GPS ground track
http://www.omode.co.uk/Content/ThamesTriangleTrack-2008-09-27.pdf
Photos by Nick & Jon
