Monday 11 October 2010

Captain's Slog - Sunday 10th October

The weather today was sunny all day, a cloudless sky. We wouldn't be leaving St Katherine's until 2.30pm when the tide was the right height. St Katherine's had shower facilities so that avoided the need to shower on the boat. Breakfast joined by Sarah, was the popular bacon and mushroom sandwiches of the past few days. We then spend some leisurely time wandering around St Katherine's and the river front, until time to set off.

Sunny Sunday morning at St Katherine's

We left St Katherine's for the two mile trip to Limehouse. The tide was almost at its highest, but with a considerable current, we expected to do about 2 mph and in fact that is what we got, we had no bridges to go through and one bend to go round, the wind was also against us. We made steady progress to the bend and got half way in a half hour or so. It then was quite windy and progress was slow, so we moored up at Wapping Pier, as we knew the tide was about to turn. After half an hour or so we set off again, we radioed Limehouse and said we would be there about 4.15pm, they said that they had been tracking us on camera from the marina, but we had disappeared, we were at the pier and out of sight.

 We now made steady progress about 1.5mph and reached Limehouse about 4.20pm, everyone was delighted to be out of that part of the Thames and back in the canal. We slowly made our way to our mooring point, at Victoria Park in Hackney. We were one of 20 or so boats, in the night someone kindly untied our front and rear ropes and we drifted into the middle of the canal, so Glyn and I went out and moored again. This time tying our ropes around the anchor, so it would clang if anyone moved it, nothing else happened, it was the end of quite a hectic day.

Tower Bridge from downstream

Canary Wharf - the pointed tower is the tallest building in UK

Entrance to Limehouse

A closer view

In Limehouse Lock



View of Canary Wharf from canal

Lock in Mile End

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