On Friday 10 July we were met by the rest of our crew at Sharpness - Chris Goodwin, and the two Peters, Booth and Johnson. The previous day,   Chris, PJ and I had checked our passage planning and transferred our route to the new chart which we had bought at a wonderful chart shop in Bristol Harbour. We did not have the luxury of a pilot for this trip, so we needed to get all the leading lights and transits sorted out in advance because things can happen pretty fast when you are being swept along by the current. We had chosen one of the lowest neap tides of the month for our journey, it was less than the tide we had come up river on last year, and this was to create an unforseen problem later in the day.

When we booked our transit of Sharpness lock, the operators told us we were to be the only boat going down the river that day, but in the event we were joined by about 6 narrowboats and 8 cruisers of various sizes. Most of the motley bunch set off 45 minutes before high water, but we knew that we would struggle against the flood, so waited in the outer basin with a small boat which was planning to cross the river to the little port of Lydney.

We did actually set off a bit earlier than we had planned, and when we got out from betweem the breakwaters and turned into the current, we spent anout 20 minutes at half throttle and covered only about 100 yards. We stayed on course for the power station building leading lights and when the tide turned, started making proper progress. There is a big disused tidal reservoir at Oldbury which is completely hidden at high water, you really wouldn't want to stray over its stone bankings or you could be standed there for hours till the next tide came in.

The Severn bridge started to loom larger as we crossed right over toward Chepstow on the Welsh side to find the channel and then Chris rang us up - she had parked at the end of the bridge and was waving to the other boats passing underneath, more than half an hour in front of us. By the time we got there, the current was running so fast that we actually went underneath the span at an angle of 45deg in order to stay on our correct line.

Chris checking her camera on the Severn Bridge

The next bridge was soon upon us and it seemed to take a huge effort to steer clear of the pier on the Welsh side which appeared to be steaming through the water towards us at great speed.

Now it was time to call Bristol  VTS  to check for big ship movements and to tell Portishead we were coming.

When we actually spoke to Portishead, we realized that our arival was going to be within minutes of the water leaving the marina channel completely, and if we missed it, we faced the unsavoury prospect of spending most of the night in a grubby ditch, overshadowed by towering mud banks. We waited in the entrance channel whilst the lockeeper lowered the level for the last time and he advised us to keep well back to avoid the turbulence as he needed to do it quickly.

In the event, it was not a problem and we moved in and tied up to the convenient floating pontoon in the lock. This goes up and down with the water level in the lock so avoids the need to adjust your lines which would be impossible to control in a 40'deep lock! However, because we had arrive so late on the tide the upper gate cill was about 8' above us and when he started cracking the gates open we felt like the "Maid of the mist" at the bottom of Niagra.




Half way up our ascent things started getting out of hand as we were forced towards the other side of the lock and the water pressure was threatening to snap our fore line and set us loose. He saw our plight and shut the gates tight whilst we shortened our lines again.

May and Alan and Caz and the children met us at the berth and we spent a pleasant night in peace with shorepower for the first time since Tewkesbury.

In Portishead Marina