25 Knots SOLO sail across the Thames

Hi, I’m Rob & welcome to East Coast Sailing. In today’s episode, I’ll be heading out the narrow & shallow estuaries of Faversham located on the Kent coastline and tackling the turbo charged Thames Estuary. I also share some history about the Thames Sailing Barge Orinoco that was coming out of the dry dock. After getting my boat stuck 3 times on the muddy banks coming in, it was time to get Evania back out in deeper water in the wild North Sea. The weather forecast for today’s adventure indicated constant wind speeds of 18 knots with gusts hitting a wild 37 knots. I’ll be sailing my Beneteau Oceanis 343 across the heaped white capped waves. We will pass around the back of the Isle of Sheppey and past Whitstable leaving the Kent coastline beyond the horizon at a rapid pace. We will surge past the Red Sands Forts and encounter the historic boat Steam Tug Challenger that was responsible for towing the Maunsell Forts to there final resting place located in the Thames Estuary. The ship also rescued many soldiers stranded at the battle of Dunkirk participating in the little ships of Britain forming part of a civilian convoy. I’ll cross the busy shipping lanes before the winds really kicked up as we were half way into the adventure. This adventure is also tackled from a solo sailors perspective, with no one else to help and share the workload, the video conveys the hardships a solo sailor faces. Finally we headed around the Foulness Sands located near Southend. On a fast broad reach and the tide working fully in our favour, we shaved 4 hours of the journey time due to the high winds before finally passing Mersea located near Colchester, past Brightlingsea, Clacton, Walton On The Naze before heading into the protected waters between Harwich and Felixstowe and its busy port before heading up the river Orwell back to my home port of Woolverstone for the perfect docking. I hope you enjoy the episode and if you have any questions, feel free to ask. Links Shop EAST COAST SAILING east-coast-sailing-shop.fourthwall.com/en-gbp/collections/all Sunglasses & East Coast Store eastcoastsailing.co.uk Buy me a coffee buymeacoffee.com/Eastcoastsailing Track Live Journey AIS vesselfinder.com/?mmsi=235115189 Instagram instagram.com/eastcoastsailing_ Facebook facebook.com/EastCoastSailingOfficial PayPal ❤️ paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=BLUE423YMTHVN Ko-fi 🌊🍺🌈 (BEERS) 🤣😎👌 ko-fi.com/eastcoastsailing