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Various views from a short sailing cruise up the Swale
I thought that intheboatshed.net readers might be entertained by a collection of photos we took on a recent trip short trip up the Swale to Queenborough. I had hoped to travel further from Faversham but the winds on the way out were too light to enable us to sail far (we generally need a F3 to plug the tide here), and I regard the outboard as an unpleasant if sometimes necessary evil.
The Swale is an interesting and varied cruising ground for a small boat. The western end of the Swale is a curious place, seething with wildlife apparently living cheek-by-jowl with the Medway’s industrial landscape, while down towards the sea it opens to form a peaceful and sheltered sailing playground with the barely inhabited Isle of Harty to the north and nature reserves to the south.
At this point, I’d like to thank the good folks of Queenborough Yacht Club for driving me over to a nearby petrol station to get some petrol – with the light wind and motoring against the tide we used rather more fuel than I’d expected. I’ll know better next time.
The next day, we caught the early morning tide up to Kingsferry and then had a wonderfully happy sail back with a nice solid F3 and used no fuel at all! I think we did well, all in all – friends who’ve just returned from two weeks aboard their 17-footer on the Walton Backwaters told us this weekend that they’d only managed three days sailing. Luck with the weather plays such a large part in small boat sailing.
If anyone can add anything about the subjects of the photos we took along the way, I’d be grateful if they could please get in touch at gmatkin@gmail.com .
Queenborough Yacht Club is here: http://homepages.rya-online.net/queenboroughyc/