the Tuesday Night Club

[Golden Duck]

I helped deliver a friends 37ft n/b from Henley to Limehouse last month and I don't know about being at sea, but the wash from the trip boats was probably worse than the channel. Without exaggeration, it was 3ft from trough to peak.

We were shipping spray over the bow and it was splashing against the little front windows either side of the door.

However, the boat had a 6:1 length/beam ratio and rode it despite the flat bottom.

Don't know if I had liked to do it on a 70 footer !!!!

 

Incidentally, the Pool of London is definitely the roughest bit. I've done that run both ways now and it was noticeable both ways (and there were no trip boats the first time as we started really early).

 

I spoke to some tug skippers and they reckon the pool may be a confluence of some old fleets that empty in the Thames under the tide line, causing turbulence when mixed with tide and wind ????

Edited September 29, 2005 by Golden Duck

[Daftmare]

Thank you to the Tuesday Night Club for their report on the 2000 visit to the Kennet & Avon Canal. We have just got a mooring at Newbury and have never cruised the K&A before - the photographs posted were of great interest to us.

 

Jo B and Kevin

Hopefully owners of a narrowboat by next week.

[Paul Evans]

I helped deliver a friends 37ft n/b from Henley to Limehouse last month and I don't know about being at sea, but the wash from the trip boats was probably worse than the channel. Without exaggeration, it was 3ft from trough to peak. We were shipping spray over the bow and it was splashing against the little front windows either side of the door. However, the boat had a 6:1 length/beam ratio and rode it despite the flat bottom. Don't know if I had liked to do it on a 70 footer  !!!!

 

Incidentally, the Pool of London is definitely the roughest bit. I've done that run both ways now and it was noticeable both ways (and there were no trip boats the first time as we started really early). I spoke to some tug skippers and they reckon the pool may be a confluence of some old fleets that empty in the Thames under the tide line, causing turbulence when mixed with tide and wind ????

33061[/snapback]

The OCM treated our trip from Limehouse to Brentford a bit like a "white knuckle" ride and our boat is just 42'! The stretch from Limehouse to Westminster was, definitiely, the roughest part. I agree, I'm not at all sure about doing it in a full length boat.

 

In his book The Lost Rivers Of London, Nicholas Barton includes a map that shows no old rivers draining into the Pool of London (the reach between Tower Bridge and London Bridge. The closest, the Wallbrook, enters the river just east of Southwark Bridge and the next, the Fleet is further upstream just east of Blackfriars Bridge. In normal circumstances, none of the lost rivers flowing into the Thames have much of a flow because they are diverted into the Outflow Sewers that intercept London's drains and take the effluent down to the treatment works further down the river. It's only in times of exceptional rainfall - when the sewers can't cope - that the lost rivers discharge into the Thames.

[John Orentas]

In the days of the working boats, fully loaded pairs were routinely taken onto the Thames often to load/unload directly from the ships moored in the Pool of London. I think full length craft cope better with lumpy water than most people imagine.

[Richard Fairhurst]

The TNC have a regular column in Canal Boat. A couple of them post regularly to other Internet waterway forums, too.