Solving the Hammersmith Bridge Problem and Rowing the Boat Race Course in an Inflatable

 

27th April 2021

The background to this trip can be found on:

https://picomicroyacht-in-london.blogspot.com/

For the next stage of my journey up the Thames I faced the problem of what to do about Hammersmith Bridge. It had been closed for river traffic since August 2020, including for the Boat Race. 

My solution was to get close to the bridge and then pull PicoMicroYacht out of the water and trail it round to the other side. But the complication was that the bank was too steep to pull it out of the water on the tow path side and on the other side there were sea walls.

The steep bank shown on the towpath left, just before Hammersmith Bridge

Looking at photographs around the bridge I could see there were steps, but how to get a rowing boat up them? 

My solution was to use an inflatable dinghy, which was light enough to haul up the steps, and buoyant enough to be safe on the river.

So I set off with this in mind from Putney to complete the Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race Course on that outing. Immediately ahead was the new stand being build at Craven Cottage, the home of Fulham Football Club. Barges and tugs were going up and down with the stand being built from the river.

As I got further up the Harrods Depository appeared on the Surrey bank, now converted into flats. It then dawned on me that boats would bring their goods up the river and store them in the Depository.

When I got near the bridge the tide was strengthening along the bank and I realised it would be difficult to go back against it. I had to find the steps or I would be in danger of drifting under the bridge. I turned the inflatable to face upstream and drifted carefully upstream with the tide.

Going backwards towards the Hammersmith Bridge and flying the flag of my sailing club, Mengeham Rythe, in Chichester Harbour

As was doing getting closer, the crew of a  Sea Dog catamaran  started shouting at me. All they could see was an inflatable dinghy without power drifting down towards the bridge. 

Initially, because they could not hear my explanation they got more frantic. So I took out my portable radio and waved it at them. One of the crew held up both hands with fingers splayed and I realised he was indicating Channel 10. They asked my intentions, and seemed satisfied when when I explained my plan.

This all distracted me from finding the steps, but they appeared suddenly ahead. They were caked in soft mud at the bottom. With some difficulty I was able to lean over the side of the inflatable and get enough friction between my hand and the steps to hold the inflatable in place. 

I then gingerly got onto the steps and I climbed them, pulling the inflatable out of the water using an attached rope. It was hard going and I was determined not to slip or lose my balance. 

Just stabilised on the river bank

Looking back down 

I then deployed the inflatable transom wheels and used further wheels at the bow to make pulling it along easier. The towpath was smoother round the other side of the bridge.

The bank was too steep to risk lowering it back down some further steps. Instead, I trundled the inflatable along the tow path until I reached the St Pauls School slipway.

There was some delay as school crews were launching, but I enjoyed talking to the boatman who seemed to understand immediately I was doing a charity event and told me that he would like to do something similar on a paddleboard.

In a gap between the school crews launching I set off and was soon was at Barnes Bridge, at the infamous site of the Cambridge Boat Race crew sinking in 1977, the year I rowed for the Oxford lightweight crew.

The light was poor when closing in on Barnes Bridge

Chiswick Bridge was then around the corner and I finished at the Tideway Scullers boathouse.

It had taken over an hour and half to row the Boat Race Course in an inflatable, compared to the 16 to 18 minutes it takes the Oxford or Cambridge crews.

PicoMicroYacht Back in Action and Exploring the London Waterways

20th April 2021

With the lockdown restrictions reducing, PicoMicroYacht is back in action. Over the next Bank Holiday in the UK, PicoMicroYacht will explore the canals of London for four days.

There is a blog which describes the background to this, including fundraising for a charity called CASPA - see the link:

https://picomicroyacht-in-london.blogspot.com/

To start this adventure, PicoMicroYacht went though the centre of London on the Thames, from Greenwich to Putney on 20th April 2021.

It was a calm day with a neap tide, making the voyage safer.

As I looked back, I could see the traffic lights of the Thames Barrier.

Round the corner was the O2, still closed, but due to open up next month.

I rowed gently to conserve energy for the 15 mile journey. Soon I was seeing the buildings of Canary Wharf, the West India Lock in the foreground.

The Thames round here is very built up, but there is still some character, for example, the garden of this house I passed.

It seemed no time at all that I had gone through Tower Bridge.

Further on the police started to take an interest in me and circled around from a distance. Eventually came along side to quiz me about my intentions. I took a discrete photograph of their launch.

I passed the London lifeboat station, reminding me of the dangers of the river, mainly for pedestrians,  who fall in. The lifeboat crews are on permanent standby to react immediately.

I went quite close to the Houses of Parliament and saw some guards with the guns at the ready, but partly hidden.

Having passed through the centre, I was feeling hungry and saw a Waitrose Store by the side of the river. There was a convenient beach and ladder. However, when I got the top of the ladder I realised it was sloping outwards away from the river wall, making it unsafe to continue. I peered over the top and then went back down. Onlookers were surprised to see my face momentarily.

Further upstream, I was pleased to reach the magnificent Putney Bridge and my finishing point.

London Rowing Club came into view, a crew getting ready for their outing.

The voyage had taken just over four hours, at an average speed of about 3.75 miles per hour.

Secret Waters: The Walton Backwaters in Essex

To create a sense of intrigue, the children's author Arthur Ransome renamed an estuary in Essex, the Walton Backwaters, the 'Secret Water.' His book, by the same name, is about the 'Swallows,' a group of sibling children, being marooned by their father on an island in the middle of the estuary, given the task of mapping out the different islands and waterways. 

The story starts with their father, a busy naval commander, taking them there from further up the coast, depositing them with a dinghy and a tent. The book was written over 80 years ago and the fictional map the children produced can still be used as approximate navigational guide.

I decided to launch at Harwich and follow their route into the estuary. As I rowed away from Harwich one of the large container ships that docks in Harwich port moved in. 

To get into the estuary a yacht has to locate a narrow channel across hard sandbanks. The buoyage is hard to see, and from a distance the flat coastline is marked only by the Naze Tower just visible to the naked eye in the distance.

I lined up my course and kept going into the estuary,  eventually passing a group of yachts that were coming out through the narrow entrance channel and stemming the tide. I had the luxury of drawing only six inches, so could keep well clear of them.

I passed Stone point, a sandy spit that marks the entrance to the Walton Backwaters. Boats stop here to spend the day and perhaps picnic and swim on a secluded beach.

The next group of boats were the dinghy sailors, racing around the expanded waters of the estuary.

As I passed them, they seemed very relaxed for racing dinghies and would smile and wave, the East Coast a friendly place to sail.

The dinghies gave way to quieter sailing waters the flatness gave me a sense of the atmosphere of old.

Notes on the voyage: I is possible to launch off the beach at the Harwich seafront. I timed things a few hours before Dover high tide when the tide was sweeping down the North Sea and into the Walton Backwaters. This meant I was in the estuary as it filled with water and could take the reverse tide back to Harwich. 

The Heart of the Jurassic Coast: Bridport to Lyme Regis

Before the lockdowns, the second journey along the Heart of the Jurassic Coast took me past some iconic coastline, not least the Golden Cap.

A mist had nearly cleared as I left the port and the sea was calm.

Just outside the port some people were having an early morning swim.

A watery sun was rising over the cliffs to the east, where the British crime drama, Broadchurch, was filmed.

I went close in at the Golden Cap, taking care not to ground on the rocky reefs below the cliffs.

The Golden Cap had a sleepy and somewhat mysterious look.

It did not take long to reach Lyme Regis, a busy port for tourists, visiting yachts and fishing, but managing to retain it's charm.

The Heart of the Jurassic Coast: Abbotsbury to Bridport

In the summer I decided to voyage further along the Jurassic coast from Abbotsbury to Lyme Regis.  Here the spectacular coastline is part of the older Jurassic landscape, the strata laid down between 200 and 164 million years ago in shallow seas, trapping a myriad of fossils, exposed as the cliffs crumble into the sea. 

My first port of call was Bridport.

PicoMicroYacht's route from Abbotsbury to Bridport and then Lyme Regis

Abbotsbury is at the end of Chesil Beach that stretches east to Portland, this beach an extensive shingle bank. 

My first task was to haul PicoMicroYacht up and over the shingle. Having done so I walked back down and inspected the track I had made. 

Soon I was off. The sea was languid, but I knew how dangerous this coast could be in a gale, when the waves crash against this lee shore, in the past unwary ships broken up as they were smashed onto the shingle.

Soon the sun was dipping in the sky, silhouetting the West Dorset cliffs, creating a colour palette, a contrast of yellow sandstone, golden limestone and crumbling grey clay.

I looked up and saw holiday caravans perched on the cliffs.

As the light faded further I could just see Bridport in the distance.

Bridport is not ideal for yachts because of the exposed entrance, but has been improved substantially. In past times the narrow channel was notoriously dangerous to shipping in any sort of sea.

Maurice Budden's photograph of the old Bridport entrance

https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/3180105

Now the wider angled entrance protects pootoon moorings, accessible for small yachts.

A welcome place to moor up for the night, my next port of call Lyme Regis.

Crossing the Bar at Salcombe

The film clips in this post are provided if it is viewed in the Web version.

Just before our second lockdown I was able to row out of Salcombe Harbour to the bar. It was a fine  day with the vivid blues of the sea and sky in early November. 

It was over this bar that the Salcombe Lifeboat Disaster took place on 27th October 2016 when the Salcombe lifeboat, the William and Emma, capsized whilst heroically crossing the harbour bar on their return from attempting to rescue a stricken vessel.

The William and Emma

Although it turned out the crew of the vessel did not need rescuing, the lifeboat was now in serious difficulty and eventually overcome on the bar by a freak wave. Thirteen lifeboat men died and two survived to tell the tale.

A contemporaneous drawing of the William and Emma closing on the Salcombe Bar

A good account of this disaster can be found in Robert Barrett's 'The Salcombe Lifeboat Disaster: 27 October 2016, published by Salcombe Lifeboats.

My copy of the Salcombe Lifeboat Disaster

I was intrigued by what had happened and went out to the bar to have a look, then making a short video telling briefly the story of the the brave men who crossed the bar in a gale and returned in a storm.

The bar is also famous because it is the likely the inspiration for  Alfred Lord Tennyson's poem Crossing the Bar. 

The poem uses the metaphor of crossing a harbour bar for the journey through life and then into death, with hope of meeting God, referred to in the poem as the pilot. 

There is a particularly poignant second verse as follows:

But such a tide as moving seems asleep,

Too full for sound and foam,

When that which drew from out of the boundless sleep.

Turns again home.

Although the lifeboat disaster took place after the poem was written, the last two lines of this verse echo the uncertainty of the lifeboat men as whether to cross the bar or voyage east to Dartmouth. 

The William and Emma approached the bar twice before deciding finally to turn again home in a final attempt.

In 2018 ‘Crossing the Bar’ was sung at the inauguration  of the new B Class Salcombe lifeboat, the Gladys Hilda Mustoe. 

PicoMicroYacht went back into the harbour, and I disembarked and packed up PicoMicroYacht, putting on the cover. I had left my handheld VHF in the boat, switched on, and eventually it started beeping as the battery ran down.

A lifeboat man, I think Paul Bennet‘’, heard the beep and went to investigate, switching it off. The following day he told me he investigated incase it was an activated personal Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon (EPIRP). We chatted as he readied his Beneteau Yacht for sailing.

The lifeboat men and women always look out for you  -  it’s in their nature.

The PicoMicroYacht Music Box

 I really like being out at sea and listening to music, preferably with the volume up. The sea is one place you can listen to music surrounded by nature without tending to bother other people. To keep my music systems safe, I have put them in a waterproof box. This video shows the system I use (the video appears only if viewing on the web version).