Sail into London logistically challenging

This morning I'm drilling some holes in the boat. I'm gonna mount these these extra cleats here just because I'm kind of sharing cleats a little too much. So we'll have an extra one so I have my whisker pull downhaul for my line for the jib. That's a fender. Yeah so we'll have plenty of cleats now. In today's video we're going to sail from Harwich to London and uh maybe 75 miles or so. The challenge is we have to go up the Thames River which uh there's a lot of ships and some VHF for forwarding requirements and also the tides are quite strong so you really have to time it right. You can see two knots plus. I was talking to the guy who was just here. He left uh his YouTube channel is Sam Sales and he he loaned me his pilot guide so and gave me some suggestions. We'll see how it goes. The wind seems okay. It's a little bit against me but hopefully we'll be able to get there and we'll still be okay. I need to hurry. This is our boat. I just googled it. It's supposed to be like a remotely operated like uh researcher's work vehicle or something but there was two people on it so it wasn't remotely operated apparently. It wasn't really moving that much. It was like going one knot just kind of floating around. I reluctantly turned on the motor so we're motor sailing now. One good thing is we're doing like six and a half knots with the current so that's good. Might just be motoring. Might have to put the sails down now too. Looks like the wind is. So I finally got the sandpaper and sanded this dodger down. It's looking pretty good. I'm ready to paint that. I think I'm gonna wait to paint it till I get to London and I'm not on the boat because otherwise I know I'm gonna grab it. I also sanded that area in the front of the boat where I had removed uh the fitting so that's ready to paint. Next project for today is to re-glue this foam down. Before I had used a spray adhesive but now I got some contact cement at the hardware store today so I'll give that a try see if that holds a little better. I just got the spinnaker in a massive knot. It was horrible. Then I spent like 15 minutes like untangling it getting ready to fly again and then the wind picks up so it's too strong. I don't really want to fly it anymore but I guess that's good. Now we're moving faster. We're doing we slowed down to like a couple knots but now we're back up to the six and we're gonna have to go up against the current for a few hours but I think we can make it to a decent anchorage. Here's a look at the chart so we've come down from Harwich and I've I could probably sail right over all the shallow spots but just to be careful I'll kind of stay into deeper channels and this is where I think I will anchor or I could go a little further in there that would definitely be a little more protected but I don't know if it's worth it. And the next day we sail up the Thames to London. So the sun's going down now we're still doing uh five and a half knots. I've been pleasantly surprised with with the uh the weather. This morning it looked like we were going to be tacking upwind all day and then the forecast looked the same but then I kind of switched around and now we're on a broad reach cruising pretty good but the current probably will turn against us for the last hour or two but I think we can uh work our way into one of these little anchorages or gotta find some spot to anchor. A bunch of windmills over there a lot of lightning too. A bit of a challenge making out the ships from all the lights on on land and also the navigation buoys from lights on land too. Pro tip is if the your navigation light is red and then it turns green and then it turns back to red again and then it turns green again it's probably a stoplight not a navigation light. Well it seems reasonably calm here there's still some wind and some some waves so it's probably a rolling night but I think I'm just going to anchor out here in the open just get down to about 10 feet up here there's quite a tidal range but we should be at least I shouldn't have to pull the anchor up very high. Hopefully that lightning doesn't bring any squalls but I don't think it's going to come my way. 17 this would be a pretty good place to anchor. Just drop the anchor we've got a wind and current thing that makes it kind of anchor in a weird way but it's working and we got about maybe half a mile maybe a mile of thatch but the waves they're not really too big it's a little bit so kind of a rocky night exposed out here have about 15 knots of wind uh maybe gusting to 20-25 but that's not pretty good. I just called all the marinas uh we got lucky I guess it's very they're all very booked um we there was one that was able to get us in though so in a couple hours we're gonna start sailing up the river um the Thames and then we will I think anchor there's a couple spots and then real early tomorrow we'll sail into the city part of London I guess and we'll go through a lot to get into this marina it only opens uh in between a few hours because it has to open open at high tide so I got to make sure I get there on time otherwise I guess we'll just sail around and come back out but yeah that's the plan. That spinnaker is drying out I gotta probably put that away I don't think I'll be using that while I'm sailing into London. Anchors are up, sails are out, we're heading towards London. The wind has gotten just crazy like the tide has finally switched to be our favor uh but I might have to motor up here because I don't think we're going to be allowed to tack in this channel they seem to be monitoring pretty closely uh I think that's probably the best thing but yeah the wind's picked up like 25 knots gusting to 30. I've got the sails reefed down real small. I just noticed a bolt sitting on deck and it was a big one which had me worried and it's the gooseneck bolt so that's the guy where the boom connects to the mast so I need I need to fix that. We'll be anchoring next to this lovely wharf here. We have about 30 feet of water. Anchor is down, feels pretty set. It's 7 a.m. just got underway for day number two of the Thames. Current's in our favor now and we should be getting into South Dock Marina in maybe three or four hours. QE2 bridge. London VTS sailing yacht Pickled Herring. Yes I am inbound at Crossnest. I would like permission to cross the barrier. I'm about one hour out or 45 minutes out. Pickled Herring, London VTS call again when you can see the Thames barrier. See the first buildings in London coming up on the Thames barrier around here around the bend. So unfortunately we've got to lower the sails to go into the barrier. Might be a good idea anyway so we're getting close. London VTS sailing yacht Pickled Herring inbound requesting permission to cross the barrier. Proceed on take Foxtrot span between the green arrows on piers four and five. Hot message received Foxtrot span. So I called London VTS on the radio we have permission to go through the barrier. I really hope my motor doesn't die. On this one this would probably be the worst time but I've got the jib ready to deploy just in case I need an extra push to get through. I'm excited it's pretty cool. This is the barrier that keeps London from flooding if the Thames river gets too flooded. Pretty cool structure. Very tight in here. It just got through the locks. That's a very small lock and with the tide outside it was very rolly until I closed that gate but we got our berth. Check it out. I just brought my boat around the tightest corner I've ever done. Did not know if that was possible. We're almost touching here. Okay there we go. Stand just right. This line. There you go one-handed docking. This guy right here. I got a stern line. This marina was $50 a night which is expensive but I guess we're in London so maybe that's not expensive. These barge boats are kind of cool. Well darn my bike got stolen. Cut the line. That's a bummer. I decided to go walk by the castle where the queen lives but she died the next day. It was completely unrelated I promise though. I'm gonna give one of these Brompton bikes a try. You can rent them for five dollars here for the day. They fold a lot smaller than a normal folding bike because of their 16 inch wheels and the way they fold in three places instead of two. I've been kind of curious about them. Unfortunately they're about twice the price as my other folding bike but they've got kind of a cult following so I rode around for the day. I can kind of see why it actually rides really well for having 16 inch wheels and there's a big advantage to being able to get it to fold smaller. Just getting it on and off the boat is a lot less cumbersome so I could pick one up here for a little bit less since they're made in London I guess than I can in the U.S. I think I'm gonna buy one. Thanks for watching and a special thanks to everybody who has contributed to help making these adventures and videos possible. I really appreciate it. If anyone else is getting something out of the video and maybe wants to make a contribution I got links in the description. I also do post the videos on Patreon sometimes a little bit early for those folks. In the next video I'll be sailing back out of London and then working my way down to Dover and then Brighton and to the Solent. So currently I sailed a little bit backwards and I'm in the Netherlands in Amsterdam and I'm gonna leave the boat here for the winter and fly back to the U.S. but I'm kicking around some other ideas for maybe some winter sailing adventures. We'll see what happens there. Either way I'll see you guys next