Sailing to the Swale

Sailing would be the wrong description of our trip across the Thames Estuary. It would be much fairer to say that we motored with the sails up. The engine got turned off once, for about half an hour, after we got the sails up near St Peter's Flats until we realised the tide was washing us up the Wallet and past the entrance to the Spitway. After that it was motor all the way. We wanted to be in the East Swale before dark, and that meant keeping our speed up around 4 knots which was impossible with the glassy seas and zephyr's of wind that were all the weather gave us. The inshore waters has been much more optimistic, with a 3-4 SW, but that must have been somewhere else in the area. We got hardly any wind. It goes make navigation easier; stick a course to steer on the GPS and follow it, but it's pretty dull, especially in haze with the occasional rain shower where the drops bounced off the water. Julian expressed an interest in a new autohelm for the first time in ages.

Being neaps we were not too worried about the tides, although we only had them in our favour coming out of the Blackwater. We might have tried to sail more if we 'd had the tide with us though. There was just enough wind to sail without the motor if we hadn't had a timetable.

We got to the East Swale in the end and found lots of boats there. We dropped the anchor quite close to the Faversham Cardinal buoy, within easy sight of the Responsive buoy, on the advice of Yvonne who was there with Kajan. We first spotted her on Windbreker though, where she had been invited for dinner.

After eating we rowed over to Kajan in Worm, and Yvonne gave us a lift up the creek to Hollowshore where the Smack and Barge Race briefing was being held. We had a couple of drinks, then headed back to Robinetta, with Worm getting a tow from Windbreker's inflatable.