After a hugely successful drills and skills day, I decided to run another day. Following the same format as before, I chartered a yacht from Elite Sailing, and recruited 4 crew via the Elite Sailing Club (3 of whom I’d sailed with previously).
Everyone arrived at 8, and after a safety brief and run through of the day we set off in light winds. We had a lovely down wind sail, giving people the opportunity to practice preventer rigging, gybing and general down wind skills. I then sailed us on to a buoy in Gillingham Reach. With the tide against us, on the flood, I decided it would be a nice chance for everyone to hone their navigational skills with a passage of the South Yantlet Creek.
The creek is incredibly shallow, with drying heights of 2.2m above chart datum in places. We had approximately 5.2m of water, which meant we only had 3m of water after accounting for drying heights. Taking forward and back bearings from various buoys, we safely navigated the channel and stopped to drop anchor in the Half Acre Creek.
The afternoon saw us making our way slowly back towards Chatham, in the main Medway Channel, with some ‘man overboard’ drills en route.
All in all, another successful day, and I was happy to sign off peoples log books and rack up another day of drills and skills.
