Out of Lockdown 26

 

On a soft (in the Irish vernacular) Saturday morning, a gig crew gathers, on the Royal Burnham Yacht Club Jetty. Dressed for a day at the oars.

The flood tide is sluicing by. (See the rip, past the mooring buoy). They hang, for a precarious moment, suspended between success and ignominy, as they slip their lines. Whilst the crew seek to find a rowing rhythm, the tide seizes the bow of the gig and propels them, diagonally, stern on, down the jetty. "Pull together, on the count," calmly intones the cox. The gig gathers way, enough for the rudder to bite, and turns - travelling easily now, with the stream, parallel to the shore.

They shoot along, inside the rows of moored Royal Burnham One Designs. Seeking a gap. Then spin, cross current, bend to their sweeps and ferry glide out, into the river. Working the power of the tide.

Stargazer (marked by the fifty pence piece) too must work the tides, for the homebound leg of our shakedown cruise. Our plan is to ride the Crouch ebb, out to the Whitaker beacon (twenty pence piece). It marks the end of the sandbanks (green), which extend ten nautical miles beyond the visible shoreline (yellow), of the river channel. There to pick up the first of the southbound tide, the Sheerness flood. That will carry us southwest, between the Maplin and Barrow sands; across the Thames shipping channels; into the Medway and on home, up to Chatham (marked by the one pound coin).

Because we will be sailing first north east and then southwest, we would prefer the wind to be out of a direction other than the southwest, which it was on arrival, or the northeast, which it has been since. To enable our tidal strategy to work, we also need to average better than five, preferably closer to six, knots. A breeze of between twelve to eighteen knots, out of the east or west, would therefore suit our purpose to perfection. Such a breeze is forecast to fill in, either tomorrow or on Monday.