It’s difficult to write about risk and life on the water. On the one hand, tales of bravado and derring do make great telling yet on the other there is a very fine line between taking risk, and practicing sensible seamanship. The very worst reason for making a decision at sea, is in order to make a deadline, and despite our nervousness about having a plane to catch, we were determined not to proceed unless conditions were perfect, or near enough, or not perfect but in a neat envelope of safety, or at least good enough to give us half a chance of arriving by boat rather than swimming.
We needed a combination of very modest wind, preferably in the direction of the tide, a modest tide height too if possible, and an outgoing tide so that we could take a little ride rather than fighting it for the few hours it would take. The forecast for the afternoon was vaguely promising in terms of wind strength and tide direction, but the wind direction and size of the tide and therefore current were exactly wrong.
Therefore in the interests of prudence, with only ugly but not terribly dangerous conditions we decided to umm… suck it and see. So we did and it was slow, at the safe limit of the wind, against the tide, awful if comfort on a small boat is your desire and perhaps might have been a little frightening for some without considerable sea miles under their belt.
The updated forecast was still promising a reduction in wind speed when we set out and all went well for a while. We happily pushed on, mixing it in a special lane with the little ships, each displacing several thousand tonnes more than we mostly travelling at three or four times our speed tossing up an ocean full of spray in the small chop.
We were well and truly past the point of no return, when we reached the confluence of the tides and an ominous darkening of the sky brought significantly higher winds. “Gnarly” comes to mind, perhaps “character building” would be an expression that fits the penultimate half hour or so of our passage, with some peaks so steep that we were wishing we had low range and four wheel drive. We were still within our safety margin and weren’t in any significant danger, but it’s fair to say that we were at what we consider to be the safe limit for our boat, which was not built for the sea.
With the bow and sometimes the stern being bounced well clear of the water by the confused sea, we were making little progress across the water, but still being propelled towards our destination (or the north sea if we couldn’t turn in time) at more than ten kilometres per hour.
When the time came to turn into the protected current, with a maximum upstream speed of less than four kilometres per hour, crossing fourteen ships was something of a trial. Dave and Ria’s view of proceedings from their “Max” gave them some cause for anxiety, and we were grateful of course for them remaining in visual contact for the whole voyage.
We can’t pretend we weren’t relieved when the banging stopped, nor that we weren’t just a little tired, perhaps satisfied and overjoyed that our little boat had exceeded our expectations, let alone that we were now just one lock away from being back on the canals and one step closer to “home”.
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