First Voyage! Crossing the North Sea to the UK from the Netherlands | EP 255

This time on Distant Shores, we set sail on our first voyage with the new boat for an overnight sail, dodging oil and gas platforms, wind farms and shipping lanes across the North Sea and deal with the high tides of the English East Coast and the River Humber. We're Cheryl and Paul Shard, hosts of the Distant Shores Sailing Adventure TV series. We've been sailing and living aboard for 35 years, documenting the sailing lifestyle. Join us for the first voyage on our new boat, an AnkSail Orion 49. Our new AnkSail Orion 49 sailboat has been an exciting build project for us here in the Netherlands. For the last few weeks we've been commissioning the boat and doing daytime test sails, but now we've been given the opportunity to do an extended sea trial, sailing from Lackan through the sea lock into the Wadden Sea and we'll then do an overnight passage across the North Sea to Hull on the East Coast of the UK, a voyage of about 220 miles. All right, this is our very first time to go out the locks, go out into the salt water. There's a sea lock here, there's actually two sea locks, a small one and a big one. We're just going out the locks waiting for the highway to close so we can go on out and get our first ocean sailing in. First time in salt water when the keel hits the water as this lock door opens and we get going. So we've got the main and the Genoa out. The breeze is from the west at about 13-14 knots which puts it on our starboard quarter so it makes this an absolutely beautiful sail. Wow, this is lovely. A little bit of a cool breeze though so I've been sitting downstairs in the pilot house enjoying that but you can keep a watch in the pilot house and just come out and check the sails easily as well to check on how things are going outdoors. Making about seven knots and there's about a knot of current against us so we're doing six over the ground so SOG is one showing it's a bit over one knot of current on the nose. The North Sea between the Netherlands and England is shallow and there are many wind farm installations plus natural gas operations making it one of the busiest open sea areas we've sailed across. When we get to our destination at the mouth of the Humber we notice we will be changing hemispheres. Our longitude is counting down to zero degrees east. We are just over 100 miles due north of the Greenwich Observatory which puts us right on the border of the east and the west and we've got the tides right as we've got nearly three knots of current in our favor pushing us up the river. Coming up on high water it's a rising tide. Our destination is the public marina at the Humber. The tidal range today is over five meters or about 16 feet. Access to the marina is through this lock gate which keeps water in the marina at a level near the high tide mark. Because of this the marina may only be entered between three hours either side of high water. If you're planning a visit to this sort of marina, quite common in high tidal areas, you need to take this into account in your planning. My plan is to use the flooding tide to help push us up the river and arrive at Hull near high tide around eight in the evening. This is perfect since we'll have the last light to see where we're going as we try to find our way to our dock. We get into the rolling lock gates and we're ready to go. We've just arrived in Hull in England in the UK. We left Mackum in the Netherlands way over 24 hours ago. It's been like a day and a half we've been at sea and what a wonderful place to arrive. It's quiet, there's all kinds of things to do in town. We're ready for a shower. We've got to get tied up though. It's a very tight little space in here to find if there's any spots left for us. I hope there's a place because look at these pubs. Wow. Next day when the tide is rising I go to see the lock. It's two and a half hours until high water so it's more than halfway up from low water. These boaters can use the last of the rising tide to help them get to their destination further up river. Anyone wanting to travel down river as we will be when we leave will wait until the current changes to an ebb flow after high water. Bon voyage guys, good journey. Since the current often flows greater than four knots in this river it pays to take this into account planning your pilotage. Every time the lock is operated it will take over a million liters of water to refill the chamber. This water comes from the marina but it will all be refilled at the next high tide. Well I was very fortunate today a fellow sailor in the marina here has offered to drive me to a nearby very big grocery store. I've been able to get most of what I want just walking locally but it's always nice to do a big shop whenever I can and of course he knew the stores and where the best things were and it's surprising when people look on a boat they think where is all this stuff going to go but under the furniture are big bins and lockers where we can store long-term things. We do have to be careful about the weight so I tend to store lightweight things like paper products and so on higher up and then I'll keep the canned or tinned goods low because they're heavy and I use you know ziplock type bags to protect glass things because you can't always get cans or plastic things and we try to reduce the amount of plastic we use on the boat and we have bubble pad to pad things but we eat very well on board and it's been fun here to get products that we haven't been able to get in other places. This is very cool tied up in the marina here in Hull we've got the Spurn light ship. A light ship is a ship that acts as a lighthouse. They're used in places where the currents make it difficult to build a lighthouse or where the water is too deep. This one was built in 1927 and was stationed about four miles off the entrance to the Humber. The lighthouse crews used to come down and spend a whole month on the ship and then after their month was over they would go and work on other things ashore and have some days off I presume but they spent an entire month doing four hours on and eight hours off watch tending the light and keeping shipping safe in the approaches to the river Humber. Yeah so the pilot house is a lovely place to sit and keep a watch. You can see everywhere in front of us so 180 degrees forward view and probably back I can actually see pretty well be pretty well everywhere all around very comfy in here. This passage is a little bit difficult in terms of the tidal gates and the times you need to plan to get to different places so passage planning as well as the pilotage to get in and out of the river was a bit thrilling last night. So our first gate was last night we had to get out of the marina by around five o'clock and then we would get a tide down the river and the marina is actually closed for six hours then open six then close six again so you get your first planning gate is there in the getting out of the marina and then so then we anchored for the night at the very pretty spurn head anchorage it's very nice and got to watch the moon come up it was beautiful meant we had a clean start in the morning where we already didn't have to worry about the tides in the river and we could get out into here the tides are only a knot and a half so it doesn't affect us that badly and then for the night we're going to have to avoid wind farms and gas fields and then we have the second gate anytime between two and five or six should work out okay to get us in at the end so passage planning a bit of a challenge but if you do something like the almanac this is the reeds 2024 almanac so i've got the tides and tide diagrams here and you can see how we'll be doing out here but the as i say for the passage plan we want to be sure to get in at the right time tomorrow afternoon if it's too early we'll just end up waiting outside while there's a problematic currents and everything this trip over to england is our first really big passage and just totally fell in love with the idea of the pilot house cruising this is this is the way to go sitting here at the nav station out of the breeze giving a look around we look forward to sharing the fun of sailing distant shores 4 with you subscribe now so you don't miss any upcoming adventures and check out our sailing schedule on the distant tours website to see when and where you can join us aboard it's a great way to introduce a loved one to the sailing life get some hands-on experience sailing to foreign ports while trying out a new boat and just generally having a good time with us on the water we look forward to welcoming you aboard