Passage DiariesPeter BernardAugust 26, 2022Comment

The Beginning of the End

Passage DiariesPeter BernardAugust 26, 2022Comment

Day 1: Inverness to London

Fri Aug 26 2022

The final passage of the first half of our circumnavigation began in unusual fashion, with me leaving Jen behind on the dock accidentally!

From our berth at Seaport Marina in the Caledonian Canal in Inverness, we still had two locks to descend before we made it to the sea. We cast off the lines in a hurry, as the two other boats that would be sharing the locks with us made their way past. We didn’t want to keep them and the lock keeper waiting.

Usually, we’ll have a 10 second chat before Jen casts off the lines to decide the best order based on the wind direction, current, what else is around us etc. But this time we were in too much of a rush, and the conditions seemed fairly benign.

Not benign enough, as it turned out – by the time Jen had let off the final line we had already blown far enough off the dock that she could no longer jump the gap to make it on board.

Common sense prevailed and she stood by while I manoeuvred Steely back to the dock. Once we had a full complement of crew aboard, we made our way into the lock.

As we descended, we chatted with the boat next to us. “Where have you come from?” and “Where are you off to?” are the two most common questions, of course, and just like every such conversation during our time in Scotland, our answers were met with surprise, incredulity, and even a little awe.

“You came all the way from Sydney? Wow”. (They would have been less impressed if they’d seen me ballsing up our departure not 10 minutes earlier, I suspect).

These reactions, and the conversations that have followed, have been a lovely aspect of our time in Scotland, and one that, oddly enough, we hadn’t ever really anticipated.

Having spent the last 4 years almost exclusively in the company of other circumnavigators, our journey has come to feel thoroughly unremarkable to us. I wouldn’t say we’ve become jaded by the experience, not at all, but it’s just become our new normal.

My favourite quote from Scotland’s national poet, Rabbie Burns, is “The greatest gift that God can gie us, is to see ourselves as others see us”, and the many, many conversations we’ve had about our journey so far over the last 3 months have been particularly affirming.

These conversations have also reinforced that our lives are about to change, however, as we settle down in London and commence the next phase of our journey – resuming our careers and getting to live in one of the world’s great cities.

Excited though we are at the prospect, we’ve also been enjoying every last minute of our time in Scotland, milking it for all we could in the knowledge that it will be the last cruising we do on Steely for a long while.

We’ve been blown away by the stunning anchorages and scenery, of course. And the gastronomic delights that only Scotland can offer (Macaroni Cheese with Black Pudding, anyone?). The weather has been surprisingly tolerable, even quite good at times. And of course, we’ve met and befriended many local sailors, plus some international cruisers from France, Sweden and Germany. We’ve even resumed our friendship with a Finish couple whom we last met in in St Helena some 6,000 miles ago, and who made time to stop into our anchorage near Oban to see us on their way home to Finland.

But best of all, we’ve gotten to enjoy having friends coming to stay on board Steely and/or cruise with us for the first time since Covid (big shout out to Nicole, Adam, Linda, Jaime, and Malcolm & Fiona). Having friends and family come to stay has been the absolute highlight of our circumnavigation so far, and the enforced absence due to Covid has been such a loss, so it felt wonderful to be able to share the journey once more. And all the more special (and surreal) to do so on Steely here in Scotland.

As time has gone by, though, and we neared the end of the Caledonian Canal, a pervasive sense of dread has begun to occupy my psyche. Not for our life ahead - as I’ve said, we’re really excited about this next phase. But instead because of the passage that lay between us and our new home in St Katharine Docks in London.

While the west coast of Scotland is famous for being one of the most spectacular cruising grounds in Europe, the same can’t be said for the east coast of the UK. The North Sea can be particularly unforgiving, with frequent gales, rough seas and fog. There is a distinct lack of deep water harbours on the east coast that are suitable for yachts (most of those that exist are commercial ports). For those reasons, we decided to maximise our time on the west coast, and then sail directly from Inverness to London non-stop.

Moderate to strong winds in the wrong direction are things we no longer fear in general, of course, given how well Steely has proved herself. But wind that we would normally be able to take in our stride can be altogether more confronting in the North Sea, so we determined that a key part of our passage strategy was being patient and waiting for a suitable weather window.

As it turns out our biggest challenge weather wise for the window that has presented itself is going to be not enough wind – in fact our Predictwind software is suggesting that we will have to motor the entire way!

On the one hand, this is a little disappointing – especially for our last sail for quite some time. In these days of rising fuel prices, it also means that we would have been cheaper to fly down to London – it will cost us around 800 pounds in diesel just for this trip!

Never has the phrase “Sailing is the most expensive way ever devised to get somewhere for free” felt so applicable.

On the other hand though, the lack of wind does at least mean that the other tricky aspect of this passage should be more manageable.

The east coast of the UK is notoriously difficult to navigate, due to a combination of huge numbers of wind farms, gas platforms, oil rigs, cargo ships and fishing vessels, not to mention strong currents, sand banks and the aforementioned weather.

As I was planning our route on the charts, there were areas where I literally couldn’t see how to plot a path through all the hazards, and had to reach out to sailors with more local knowledge to get advice. Although we’ve sailed the Malacca and Singapore Straits 3 times, and thus are no strangers to high concentrations of commercial ships, at least those passages did not also involve the other navigational hazards we will face here.

So the fact that we’ll be motoring and can thus go exactly where we want to without worrying about tacking or leeway, means that we can be a lot more confident in our routing.

With the strong tides being a factor, we need to ensure that we time our passage through the “tidal gates” perfectly (especially for our final 40 miles up the River Thames), and motoring makes those calculations much easier as I can accurately predict our speed for the entire journey.

So as we descended the final lock, and the gates opened, we knew a tricky 4 days awaited us. Not least the next 4 minutes, as the tide rushing sideways past the exit to the sea lock was in full flow. I was worried that we might be pushed sideways into the gate as our bow exited and got caught by the tide. As it happened, it wasn’t too bad, but within 10 minutes we were battling our way against 4 knots of adverse current and dodging freighters in a narrow channel. Yup, our tricky passage had definitely begun!

Once we were out of the narrows things calmed down a lot, and we even got our sails up for a very pleasant couple of hours before the wind dropped away as forecast and the engine went back on. I don’t expect to hear silence again until we’re in London.

As I write this, I’ve just witnessed one of the most spectacular sunrises of our circumnavigation so far. I can’t post pictures on this micro blog, but once we’re in London I’ll convert this post into a full blog and add the pictures - it was simply too spectacular not to share.

And of course it made me realise that for all that I’ve been dreading this passage, I really ought to be savouring it – sunrises at sea are a rare privilege, and this passage offers up just another 3 or 4 of them. We’ve also just been visited by a pod of giant dolphins, which I don’t imagine we’ll have many opportunities to see while we’re in London, for all its many attractions.

As so often happens, the things that you look forward to the least turn out to be so much better than you anticipated. If nothing else, as we re-immerse ourselves in the rat race, I know I’m going miss the plentiful opportunities this journey has given us to reflect on and listen to life’s lessons.