CliveG

I have been trying to get Sirenia home for the past few weeks.
The forecast for yesterday was a bit of putting but we went for it.

I had sorted out all the kit and the trailer last Sunday so we where ready to go.

Filled the Range Rover up with LPG on the way and found that the fill valve was leaking.
Shut of the gas at the tank and carried on on petrol.

We has decided to recover at Ramsholt along side the stone quay on the firm sand.
We got her onto the trailer and started to pull her out and things were going well until I stopped part way out to check that she was sitting in the trailer o.k.
She was not centered correctly so we tried to let her back in to sort her out.
No movement.
O well just haul her out and we will sort it out ashore.
No movement apart from the Range Rover digging it’s self in.
Add more rope to ger the RR onto harder ground.
Still no go.
Ask a chap from the pub to give us a hand with his Land Cruiser.
Result = 2 4x4s with spinning wheels.
Our friend then offered to fetch a tractor from a farm up the road.
Whilst we where waiting for that to arrive it was suggested that we put a strap around Sirenia and square her up on the trailer by pulling her across with the RR.
That worked well.
The tractor arrived and succeeded with some wheel spin.
Finally ashore at 4 o’clock

We got her mast down and stowed everything for the road.
The next challenge was getting though the gate posts at the top of the pub drive.
The posts are 9’6″ apart.
Sirenia has a beam of 9’3″.
Should go.
It was now dark so quite hard to see what was going on.
It was a tight squeeze but we made it after a bit of shunting.

We then found that the LPG system was not playing at all and the fan belt to the alternator had broken.
We drove up to Woodbridge and stopped in a garage but they did not keep any fan belts.
A local at the garage offered to lead us to a Motor Accessory shop that was still open.
They had a belt – Result.

Enough adventures for one day lets go home!

Passing Stowmarket on the A14 the RR started running a bit rough.
By Woolpit we were down to a couple of cylinders and going no further.
We manager to crawl onto the entry slip road to get out of the way of the thundering trucks.
Time 7.15 p.m.
A call to the breakdown service got them on the way but with the comment that they would not be able to recover the trailer.
A call to a Tim’s mate got him on the road with his RR.
We put Sirenia behind that RR and Tim & his Mate took her home.
I sat by the A14 and waited.
The RAC van got to me at 9 o’clock and told me that he could not fix it and I needed recovery. I had told them that when I called.
The recovery truck arrived at 10.15 and i was back home at 11.00.

The one good point – The weather was not as bad as forecast.

I am now resolved that once Sirenia is back on the water in the spring I am not bringing her home again.
All I need to do now is find a way of getting her back to the coast.

We walked our legs off around London looking for a chandlery to buy a Winch handle pocket as part of Sirenia’s on-going re-fit.
We found one under Blackfriars bridge. Some chandlery, no pocket but loads of diving and water skiing kit.
There is a Nauticalia in Convent Garden but it is only a gift shop.
There is Arthur Beale’s in Shaftesbury Avenue but they only seem to stock blocks, rope, screws etc.
We then visited HMS Belfast.
That was most interesting.

The trip home started on Thursday morning, High Tide London Bridge was at 05:54.
St. Kats Lock is not maned before 06:00 but they opened the bridges in the dock to allow those that had booked to leave access to the lock at 05:55.

We left the lock at 06:35 behind a large Thames Barge.

Heading off down river pass all the sights again we where puzzled by this ship section by the O2 arena.

We had contacted the Thames Barrier by VHF after leaving St. Kats and were instructed to call again when we had the barrier in sight.
This we did and they allocated span Bravo to us.
This is the narrower opening at the south end of the barrier.
The Gate in Span Charley was raised.
There was a lot of disturbed water down stream of the barrier.

Under the QEII bridge again.

We managed to get as far as off Southend before the tide turned against us.
It was decided to have a try for Havengore so we went along the north side of the estuary waiting for enough water to cross the sands.
I think that we may have tried the wrong route, it was a bit to bumpy and a bit to early.
We started hitting the bottom quite soon after leaving the deep water and gave up in the plan.
We went back to Queenborough and spend a rolly and noisy night on one of the buoys by the all tide landing.
High water Sheerness was 05:04 this morning and we left at 06:15.
the wind was NE to NNE and around 15 to 18kts.
We motorsailed into it tacking to get a good angle on the waves.
The exit from Sheerness was very unpleasant with steep waves.

We had the tide with us until we crossed the spitway into the Wallet at 11:11
We then spent wet hours punching wind and tide to get to the Naze.
Now back at Shotley.
We brought a Winch handle pocket here.

We left Queenborough at 06:55 this morning and steadily headed out on to the Thames and up river.

We found that we were punching about 1 kt of tide.
We had a nice beam wind for the 1st part of the river and managed to make about 5 kts water speed until the river turned south and then it was engine time.
We then pushed on at 5.5 kts waterspeed.
The tide did not turn until about 10:30 by which time we were about 1/2 a mile below Tilbury.
When we reached the QEII bridge we found the the mast would fit under

We had 7.3 kts SOG by there with 5.5 kts water speed.

At Crayford Ness we called Thames VTS to request passage through the Thames Barrier as required.
We were told to proceed up river and to call again once the Barrier was in site
This we did from by the Woolwich Ferry.
We were instructed to pass though gap Foxtrot.

The river traffic below the barrier was fairly light.
We passed or were passed by about half a dozen ships at most.
It was a different story above the Barrier.
There were string of barges, trip boats and quick passenger boats.
You need to have eyes in the back of your head for the last of these.

They are on you before you realise they are around.

We arrived of St Kats at 14:05 without incident.

We called St Kats. Ch 80.
They responded straight away and informed us that there would be a Thames Barge locking out at 15:20 and we and others would be locked in after that.

A 40′ steel motor sailer that had picked up a large round buoy just off the lock kindly offered us a berth along side them.
The river was quite rough and we needed plenty of fenders and faily slack lines to prevent any damage.

Contrary to what we had been told we where called into the lock by VHF Ch 80 not by voice.

We are now safely tucked away in the East Dock of St Kats for a day or two.

Data for the trip for those interested.

Tides
Sheerness
03:24 5.7m
09:24 0.9m
15:30 5.7m

London Bridge
04:46 6.6m
11:08 1.1m
16:50 6.7m

It took us 7hr 10 min to do the trip
Of that about 6 hrs where using the engine.
We could have left a bit later but we were up and about so decided to push on.
Once the flood tide has got going we had a least 7.5 kts SOG and quite often 8 kts.