Sailing out to sea.

Daryl had called to say he would be with us about 1000 so we had a lazy start to the day. I went up the road to the nearest garage and got the Sunday paper and then filled up with water.

I took this photo at about low water with the ship Lady Nora, Dutch registered, that had arrived the previous evening high tide. She had brought timber from Amsterdam.  She had swung with the help of the tug ,Fenlander, in the swinging basin just a bit down river. They started work discharging her at 0700 and she sailed again on the evning tide and back to Amsterdam, via Imuijden North Sea Canal.

About 0900 the crew of the 'Fenlander' appeared and they were off to assist another ship arriving. It turned out to be the 'Fast Wil'. She was built in 1985 so is getting on alittle now, but looks in good nick. I'm sure I piloted this ship when I was on the Humber, probably to the Trent wharves. Once she was secured and the 'Fenlander' back along side we were off as Daryl had arrived in good time and we got going with the last of the flood tide.

The River is wide among the flat terrain as the Nene runs down to the Wash. The Sutton Bridge Power station can be seen from a long way off. It was built on the old RAF Sutton Bridge site that was established in 1926 and became the main gunnery school over the years, with the Holbeach Marsh range close by. It remained with the RAF until 1958 when it was downgraded and became a civilian small air field until the power station was built in 1999. It is said that it supplies 2% of England and Wales' electricity.

This is the hydraulic accumulator tower for the swing bridge at Sutton Bridge. It is similar to those on the Manchester Ship Canal, and elsewhere. It is a Grade II Listed building but has recently been converted to a private home, but has had to retain all the mechanics with in it.

This is the third bridge at Sutton Bridge, and it is actually called the Crosskeys Bridge. The first opened in 1831 and designed by John Rennie the Younger and Thomas Telford. It was timber and cast iron and opened up like Tower Bridge. It was found to be awkward to get ships through so in 1850 another was constructed by Robert Stephenson. This one was a swing road bridge until 1864 when the Midland Railway got permission to but a rail rack across it. The current bridge was constructed in 1897 and it was hoped that the 2nd bridge could be retained to be used by the railway alone, but it was decided being so close together the two bridges would present too much of an hazard, and a track put over this new bridge too.. The line closed in 1964 and the rail side was converted to road use. Needles to say we had no need to trouble them for our passage.

This is the swinging basin for the ships using Sutton Bridge jetty. The concrte wall in the middle, with the gaps in it, was actually the lock entrance for the enclosed dock. that was built between 1878 and 1881. The lock was 200' by 50' and the enclosed dock covered 13 acres and was linked with the rail system. The first dock entered in May 1881 but had to be lightened outside as the entrance had silted up.  The official opened was to be 29th June but on 9th June parts of the wall fell away and holes in the earth appeared along side. In just a few days massive parts of the concrete and brick walls were collapsing and despite the tipping of much ballast and sand behind to try to stabilise the situation it continued to breakdown. The three ships that were in there just managed to get out before it became totally unusable and was abandoned. It is now a gold course! 

It wasn't until 1987 that a jetty port was constructed that can take four or five ships up to 150m long and a maximum of 6m draft at spring tides. The 'Nataly' is registered in Antigua and Barbuda and is 89m long. It left for Antwerp a day later. The other vessel is the 87m long 'Eems Stream' that had arrived from Kiel.

This is the bitter end of the River Nene at Wisbech Cut. As the training walls extend out to sea to the beacons the seals are laying out on the exposed sand.

The land on the right is the Outer Trial Bank. This was to test the feasibility of constructing a tidal barrier across half the Wash to trap fresh water for domestic use and to provide better access to the rivers for shipping and recreational activities. It cost £3 million. Another smaller mound was built further south and connected to the land. In 1976 the study was published and concluded that the water wasn't able to be kept salt free enough, and the whole thing would be far too expensive so it was left.

The channel of the Nene wiggles about a bit and edges on to the firing range of Holbeach Marsh Bombing range, not in action today! Daryl came fully equipped with flares radios etc etc, but not his over trousers so we thought it was bound to rain!! It was warm and not too sunny so very comfortable. The time passed very quickly as we swapped yarns on the passage.

Once clear of the Sutton Bridge/Wisbech/Nene fairway buoy we headed towards a ship at anchor. This gave us a great target as the start of the channel for the Witham and Boston was not visible from the distance we were. It turns out that the ship was the 'Lady Amalia', sister ship to the Lady Nora we had seen in Wisbech. She was built in 2012 and had been to Sutton Bridge with a cargo from Rouen, and was out here anchored waiting for orders it seems.

Once past the ship we could head back inwards. The channel was wide at first and slowly as the ebb continued more sand appeared. The weather looked threatening but stayed clement. Daryl wanted to see if we could get over the Bar close by Black Buoy (that is actualy a red buoy!), so we could get up to Boston as early as possible as when the tides makes there it would come in a rush and he didn't want to miss the level as we are too long to sit in the lock.

We decided to beach here, but as the wind was blowing from the left of the photo she wouldn't sit with her bow on, so we just lay alongside the sand. There was no bumping or grinding so we retired inside for more tea, cake and chat.

The three cruisers had come to the anchorage from the north and were obviously waiting for water to cross the bar. The No.11 buoy is obviously not marking the deepest water any longer. They were coming up to Boston on the tide with us. There was also a small sailing boat that was coming up with us. He had passed us whilst we were beached.