Friday 6th September
Reading Time: 5 Minutes
I had enrolled to enter the St Katharine Docks Classic Boat Festival which is held over the weekend of 7th and 8th of September. What I hadn’t realised was that the last lock-in was on the Thursday high tide. With the wind forecast as easterly, we had task on our hands to get the Good Ship up to London on time.
Philip managed to join Sumara a day earlier than originally planned, so we were able to leave very early on Friday morning (04:00 GMT) and head towards Brighton 60 nm away before a strong easterly was due to set in. In the calm morning we motored with the mainsail drawing slightly, helped by the neep tide. By 10:00 we had lost the tide and were punching through the Looe Channel but still making about 3 kn over the ground. The light wind then came directly on the nose and we dropped the sail for a while only managing to stop the engine and enjoy a sail for the last four hours.
Brighton Marina had reinstated it’s visitor pontoons after the dredging operation had moved elsewhere. I do like a dedicated visitor pontoon where you can chat with other Sailors who are out and about. Being scurried away to vacant berths in a large marina isn’t such fun.
After our voyage, we decided to go for a beer in a rather forlorn and very empty pub in the marina. We left after a pint and headed to the boardwalk for a bite to eat. To our amazement, the Pizza Express, which was at least half empty, said they couldn’t fit us in and they had closed for the evening at 21:00! We went to a nearby Italian chain restaurant and the person allocated to show us to our table was so incredibly rude that we just walked out and conjured up a tasty meal onboard to instead.
The following day, the wind was forecast to be a fairly strong easterly so we decided to enjoy the delights of Brighton town instead. We took the Volks railway to the i360 tower. We went up to enjoy the view along the South Downs from about 500 ft.
One slight disadvantage of mooring on the visitor pontoon is you stand an increased chance of getting pranged by other boats. Luckily Philip was onboard when a Contessa 32, who had run out of fuel, sailed into the marina and headed straight for Sumara with its sails still hoisted. With all his might and a few extra bystanders Philip managed to save Sumara from being tee-boned!
In our usual manner we worked out the best time to leave for the next leg to Dover or Ramsgate, but we got bored and left four hours earlier. Again the donker was to play an important role as we needed to maintain a good speed to hang on to the tide.
We swept past Beachy Head at 6.4kn and Dungeness at 5.8 kn and hung on to the tide all the way to Dover. Keen to make progress while the weather was fair we continued towards Ramsgate, punching the tide off Deal. Here my newish 16 hp Beta is proving a Godsend as my old 12 hp Kubota would never have made worthwhile progress against the strong tide.
We calculated that if we skipped Ramsgate, we could benefit from three or four hours of fair tide and favourable wind off the North Kent coast, so we plodded on, eventually mooring in Queenborough at 17:15 on Monday 2nd September. Pretty good progress!
It is a while since I had visited Queenborough. I was slightly surprised, but didn’t begrudge the £30.00 per night mooring fee on their All Tide Pontoon. We could have set off in the morning but decided to enjoy Queenborough’s delights for a whole day.
It was a great pleasure to meet up with Jim Brett. He once hauled Sumara into my workshop at London Bridge on his low loader. He still has his crane and another Queenborian now operates the trucks (Squirrel Marine). He was tinkering in his workshop surrounded by classic cars. A happy man!
There is a new (to me) pub in Queenborough called the Admiral’s Arm. It is closed on Mondays and only opens 5-9 pm but it has won loads of awards. We didn’t eat there but savoured one of their many beers. Highly recommended.
We left Queenborough on the Wednesday at 05:00. We had been moored alongside a Dunkirk Little Ship called Maimonde, who was also attending the festival.
We made the whole passage without being told off once by the PLA, quite an achievement. The PLA don’t seem to like yachts. In fact London as a whole is probably the most unwelcoming city to sail to now that South Dock and Poplar Docks are 100% residential and Limehouse don’t accept visitors. With St Kats closed for the Classic Festival there isn’t a single berth available in the great port city. This became apparent to one poor visiting yacht who presumably had to return downstream to find a mooring for the night!
However, we had our berth booked and we locked into St Kats at 13:30. Ahead of schedule and ready to enjoy all the festivities!
Leave a Reply