ARNSIDE

It has been suggested to me that my comments about Arnside in the last issue were unduly negative. Though I can think of several good reasons for being negative about sailing in the Kent estuary, I realize that some people find lakes insufficiently challenging. If they are prepared to take the word of man who has studied the estuary carefully from ashore, I offer the following extra information.

I think it makes more sense to launch at Roa Island and sail to Arnside than vice versa. I am told, by people who know Morecambe Bay better than I do, that the Walney Channel is the only anchorage for miles around that can be entered at all states of the tide and in all weathers. Apparently all of the rivers flowing into the bay and surrounding parts of the Irish Sea have breakers on their bars at low water in strong onshore winds. As Walney is where everyone heads for when caught out in deteriorating conditions, it seems sensible to use it as a base.

Given a moderate wind, I would not worry about coming into the Kent estuary on a rising tide, as long as I was ready to anchor before the stream swept against the railway viaduct at Arnside. I think I would lower sail and raise the centreboard and rudder, and I would row downstream against the flood. This would give me steerage-way without preventing very rapid progress upstream. When I grounded on the sand, as I surely would, I would soon be lifted off again.

A few people have moorings at Arnside, where there is enough shelter for their boats to survive summer’s gales, though winter’s storms would be a different matter.

For the return voyage, it is necessary to weigh anchor about one hour before high water and to motor downstream against the last of the flood. Sailing is too slow unless you are lucky enough to have a really brisk northeast wind on your stern. Arriving off Grange-over-Sands shortly before high water, you can hoist sail and head south into deeper water but, if the wind were from the south, you would need to motor for longer. The important thing is to be off Heysham before the tide has fallen too far.

The ebb can be a real menace. Some years ago I watched a small sailing-cruiser going downstream. Perhaps the navigator had made a mistake in converting GMT to BST, because they were at least two hours later than they should have been, and the tide was already running strongly. They were making the best of a bad situation by ‘dredging’, which is: dragging a light anchor from the bow while being carried stern first by the stream. The function of the anchor is to hold the bow into the current and to slow the boat so that it has steerage-way. Quite properly in this manoeuvre, they carried no sail. Everything was going well when the keel obviously grounded. Within five seconds (I am not exaggerating) the boat had slewed broadside to the ebb and rolled on to its beam-ends. I was too far away to see whether they lost anyone overboard, and in any case I was a very long way from the nearest telephone. As the incident was potentially fatal, I am sure that everyone aboard must have had a terrible fright.

Really, you know, Windermere is not so bad. Bill Sweet