Crossing the Thames Estuary through the world’s largest wind farm

This morning’s aim was to go from Harwich, across the Thames Estuary, to Ramsgate. A distance of about 45 nautical miles. To put this distance into perspective, the English Channel is only 20 miles across to France. Needless to say we were gearing up for a big day!

As we set off in the morning there was a strong northerly giving us a nice downwind course. Within the first hour we were around the Naze, the headland separating the convergence of the rivers Stour and Orwell at Harwich to the north from the Blackwater to the south, marking the start of our crossing of the Thames estuary. We’d just crossed the “Black Deep”, which sounds like a Jaws-esque horror film, but is in fact the main shipping channel into/out of London, and were due to change direction to starboard when we were met by an unexpected wind farm, which wasn’t marked on our chart. The safe-water marks (red and white striped buoys) were still in place, but the channel was leading us through the turbines. Being understandably causious, we changed direction to start going around, but quickly realised this would add at least 2hours to an already long day. So after some discussion, and a little backtracking to the entrace of the marked channel, through we went. Successfully kiting through the worlds largest offshore wind farm! The London Array has 175 turbines, each spaced between 650m to 1,200m apart, and generates enough electricity for 2/3 of Kent (470,000 homes). Slightly hair raising, especially when Islay crashed her kite and lost her board, but cool none the less.

Shortly after we were through, and our hearts had started beating at a normal pace again, the wind started to drop. We changed to foils but still didn’t have enough. Launching bigger kites in the swell was out of the question so after struggling on for an hour, trying to tease every last drop of power from the kites and barely keeping the boards foiling, we had to pack up, a mere 5 miles from the Kent coast. This in itself was a challenge, launching the rib, then getting all the gear back onto Mentor in the heavy swell took a few attempts, as each boat learched and fell with each passing wave.

After all getting safely aboard we called it a day after kiting for 45 miles in almost 6hours, and pointed Mentor “home” towards Ramsgate.

Totals for the Journey so far:

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