Woodbridge to Gravesend




		All we left at Woodbridge was our Imprint in the mud




		Waiting for the tide st The Tidemill




	We had a good trip down from Suffolk round the Essex coast on Monday 6th May 2013 thanks to the weather and our competent extra crew, Colin and Matt, and we got to Queensborough in the Medway in good time just before dark. The scenery for the trip was non existant - I don't ever want to cross Thames estuary again! Its proper dreary and fraught with channels and buoys all over the place, and that was in good weather.



				Local fishing lad from the Simpers family, heading for “The Rocks”

SS Montgomery Wreck

Our Echo sounder crossing one of the sandbars in the Thames estuary

We spent a day in the entrance to the River Swale rafted up to a lighter moored off Queensborough (it is a bit like the "Babagee" that used to be at Glasson) and we had soon had enough of the view of the powerstation at Grain. Medway Page

A very helpful lady, Yvonne, a Queensborough harbourmaster, volunteered to crew us up to Gravesend, we left Queensborough at 09:00 because Colin and Matt had to go home on the train. It was planned to take about 4 houirs, and did exactly that. Using the Thames flood current inbound we easily did 6 knots over the grund, so eased back on the throttle to save diesel.

Our best chart was actually on my tablet computer, an Android App called "Navionics" at £24 it has given us all the navigational marks we could wish for and all were up to date when we checked them on the ground. The tablet was a big benefit when plotting our course on the paper chart before we set off on each leg. .For £24 it was tremendous value and covers a huge sea area and . On our trip we have checked the position and detail of every feature and sea mark we have come across and found it accurate. Perhaps a gimmick, but you can tag photos with it to the track you have covered, so now I have a beautiful set of buoy pictures!


	Whist we were at Gravesend on the opposite side of the river from Tilbury we realised that the Thames is still a very busy river, I had thought that all the trade had been taken by Felixtowe, but Tilbury dock is a container terminal and apart from all the old jetties alongside the river all the way up to London, there are RO -Ro berths and tanker depots, and the waste barge teminal

At Gravesend we were moored on the next pier to town pier which we shared with the foot ferry to Tilbury near the fort


	Thames Page

				Tilbury Docks



	London