It couldn't last indefinately. The settled weather albeit with cool, northeasterly winds had to come to an end and it did so with the arrival of a number of deep depressions this week. Following a wet and windy Monday, a small window in the weather opened up today, giving us the opportunity to make a dash round to Limehouse Marina in London. Once here we would be able to start our trip up the Upper Thames, where we planned to spend the next three weeks. The forecast was for southwest winds of force 5-6 in the Thames area, but decreasing to 4-5 later - if we went with an ebb tide this would minimise the wave effects and give us a reasonable trip up the estuary.

The sea passage was punctuated with regular dousings of sea spray covering the whole windscreen, and odd items of cutlery crashing round the galley, but the only problem we encountered was one of our windscreen wiper motors giving up! The flood lasted longer than we expected in Barrow Deep and we experienced conditions which were rather rough, but use of all available depth sounders, GPSs and chart plotters kept us in the right channels and we never experienced depths of less than 30 feet. Lady Martina coped well as she leapt in and out of wave troughs and brushed aside the spray that was breaking right over her, and we must have been quite a sight to the large vessels at anchor who came out to watch.

For our passage up the Thames we chose to skirt the main channel, avoiding the regular commercial vessels, rather than the more southerly passage along the Blyth Sands. As we passed Crayfordness we radioed Woolwich Radio to advise them of our arrival time at the Thames Barrier, 8 miles further upstream, and were asked to call again when we had the barrier in sight.

Arriving at Limehouse shortly before the end of their lock opening time, we were relieved to see the bridge swinging to allow us access to the lock and a safe haven for the evening. We had underestimated the distance to Limehouse and the effect of the spring ebb against us, but we just managed to get into Limehouse Marina in time for the published schedule, HW+/-3, and after a false start of being directed to the wrong mooring eventually moored up.

Cruising Statistics

Distance: 80 nm

Total to date: 265 nm

Avg Speed: 12.8 knots

Duration: 6:15 hours

Diesel: 410 litres
(estimated)

Wind: SW5

Mooring: £15/night

Electricity: £2.50/night