Part Two - A Small Boat Round Britain

After a rash idea to circumnavigate the whole of Britain in a 27ft Rhea 850, Phil and Nigel find themselves plugging up the windswept East Coast

- Philip Davies

Our strategy for circumnavigating Britain was arrived at over numerous conversations before embarking. Nigel would plot the agreed passage plan on the Imray paper charts with courses to steer from waypoint to waypoint, marking our position on the chart as we went at least once every hour. We would rely on the Garmin plotter, with its electronic chart, for the detail in conjunction with the Reeds Almanac and visitmyharbour.co.uk for local pilotage notes. Weather and sea forecasts would be a composite of the BBC’s Coastal, Inshore Waters and Shipping, plus myweather2.com and windfinder.com

Tide times would always be taken as at Dover for passage planning purposes. This would keep things simple, as all of the tidal flow charts in The Reeds Almanac and marked on the Imray charts are as per Dover and the local standard port. However, as we would rarely be in the local standard port this would remove the need for another calculation.

Lastly, our intention was to cruise only in fair weather – nothing above a Force 4 and preferably with neap tides and a gentle following sea. So much for good intentions!

RAMSGATE TO LOWESTOFT

Although we have made it from Gosport to Ramsgate safely enough, thus far we have always been in sight of land. Our first proper offshore passage now awaits us across the navigationally tricky outer Thames estuary to Lowestoft, the most easterly point on the British mainland. We’ll be going past a number of wind farms and some significant sandbanks.

The wind is predicted to be Force 3 gusting 4, rising to Force 5 later, but if all goes to plan we should arrive in Lowestoft before the 5 kicks in. The only fly in the ointment will be having to endure a stretch of wind against tide in the first hour or so. That will probably be the ‘moderate’ bit of the predicted ‘slight to moderate’.