Moving forwards

I've been quite preoccupied making an application to the French maritime authorities requesting permission to move through French territorial waters, for the Channel crossing.

Of course, to accompany the application a 'passage plan' was required detailing dates and timings and route. So to give a flavour of some of the work involved I'll explain a little of the planning process.

First of all a date needs to be set, in our case the 21st October, relatively easy to work out, we need to be at Tower Bridge on 25th October. The crossing needs coordination with the tidal currents which will be at their fastest on this date with the 'spring' tides, in fact up to 3 Knots.

To take advantage of these currents, not only for the crossing but also considering the journey on the 'other side' means a departure time of 12.40 . The tidals streams atlas provides all the information concerning the currents on an hourly basis, this needs to be applied to the kayaks progress along the route, then corrections made to ensure the Kayaks get to the destination. The tidal streams vary in speed as the tide rises and falls, and each hourly rate will be referenced to the tide times at Dover.

We also will be crossing one of the busiest shipping routes in the world, Two shipping lanes are defined with a separation zone between them. The law has strict requirements, you must sail at 90° when crossing them. So this requirement is built into the route. Whilst the shortest distance is from Calais to Dover, we would be in competition with three major Car Ferry companies ! So the route is Cap Gris Nez to Folkstone.

Big ships now have to transmit a radio identification signal, to give you all an appreciation of the number of Ships, take a look at this website which maps the 'radio' data onto google maps
http://www.marinetraffic.com/ais/

Today I took the spot tracker out on the river while training, and again no problems with the signal, and the tracking markers can be seen on the 'SPOT' page of the website

A long post today, (but not as long as the emails Sam gets from me, so spare a thought for Sam ! )

Will work a new page into the Website showing route details .......... soon

Thankyou for all your donations Colin