With gales threatening from an Atlantic depression, our soon-to-become annual trip to the Thames for the London Boat Show was hanging in the balance. But with several commitments riding on it, when our weather window came we grabbed it firmly with both hands, pulling out all the stops to get the boat down to Yarmouth just two days after waving goodbye to our nine Christmas house guests. After a slightly frantic morning of packing and loading, as well as a last minute mercy dash to Charity & Taylor in Lowestoft to pick up some new charts, we spent Wednesday afternoon cruising down river - an increasingly damp, dark and chilly experience. We timed our arrival to pass straight under the Bure bridges at low water, dropping the mast and windscreens as we approached, and found a convenient spot for an overnight mooring alongside a commercial vessel on the Town Hall Quay. This avoided the need for a lot of tricky rope work to cope with the tidal rise and fall and allowed us to make a swift getaway before seven the next morning for the long passage down the coast to the Thames Estuary.

Although the shipping forecast was for winds of force 5-7, our more detailed Grib weather showed only up to force 5 in the areas we would be cruising, with the stronger winds around the Wash and further offshore. Conditions were a little bumpier than we might have liked, but were still perfectly safe, and as usual Lady Martina was in her element in the lively conditions, hampered only by the failure of the new autopilot which we had installed as part of our winter improvements. Steering manually for 120 miles seemed a daunting prospect at first but once we got into the swing of it, made for an interesting challenge and at least kept us occupied. Needless to say this was not one of the cruises where we found time to watch a DVD!

We were pleased to have completed our Thames chart updates, finding several block changes in the Barrow Deep and surrounding channels, but there was nothing to alter our course for and we followed our previous track into the estuary, doing our best to comply with the speed, navigational and radio requirements of the newly christened London VTS. Our final hurdle was an anti-terrorism check from the river police, one of those times when you're glad you weren't born somewhere unpronounceable in Russia or Wales.

After a bumpy night on the pier, visited occasionally by the fast Clipper ferries and a trip boat full of revelling partygoers, we made an early move to the nearby fuel barge for a formula 1 style fuel stop before dashing down to Limehouse for a quick lock entry before the last of the tide ebbed away.

Cruising Statistics

Distance: 143 nm

Total to date: 1713 nm

Avg Speed: 12 knots

Duration: 12:00 hours

Diesel: 700 litres

Wind: SW 3-4

Electricity: £4.20/100kW

Bridges

Vauxhall road (3.3m)

Vauxhall footbridge (3.2m)

Haven bridge (3.4m)

Limehouse marina (6m)

Charts

AC1536

AC1543

AC2052

SC5607

SC5606