Passage: Whitehaven to Bristol

 

By land, this trip would have taken just under 5 hours, which of course for us was an overnight. It's also the only passage of this tour where we had (minor) problems due to ship handling. On our initial departure, we ultimately couldn't get out of the basin in Whitehaven due to cross winds and currents and the slow speed we had to maintain to navigate the docks -- we were really too big for that harbour! For a while it looked like we were going to be pushed sideways into a row of docked pleasure craft, and a local fishing boat that happened to be available, plus Diego in our trusty dinghy, saved the day with no damage except to our dignity. We ended up dockside again after an aborted attempt, analyzing what went wrong and how to approach it differently the next time, which would be at the next high tide. 

Next high tide, we got off without a hitch, and headed out to sea. 

This photo from a local photographer shows why we had such a dicey time leaving the basin -- that is one tight fit in the lock! Captain Miguel joked that he wanted to send this picture to the home office in Spain so they'd understand how tough it was, and ask for a raise. 

Once through the tight squeeze of the lock, Captain Miguel could relax a bit. We had an escort until we left the outer harbor.

Must be careful not to take this extraordinary opportunity for granted! (Just another day at the helm of a 50-meter, 500-ton, historic replica galleon.)

Had a variety of weather conditions at sea, from sun to grey; we've learned to expect this in England.

One thing I've never taken for granted is sunrise/sunset at sea. Always different, always wonderful.

Next time I looked, it was grey.

We came up a long river to get into Bristol, with a rather jovial harbor pilot who was full of stories. We fired our cannons as we passed a small river town where, he told us, many of his colleagues lived, to everyone's delight. We also had two bridges to pass under. One was quite tall and no issue, the other gave us a very narrow window of opportunity. We were too tall to pass at high tide, and the river wasn't deep enough for us to pass at low tide. The bridge, at our perfect timing, gave us 33 meters of clearance and our main mast was 31.5 meters tall. We had to send someone to the very top of the mast to lower the flag and pole before we tiptoed under. Thankful to have the pilot and his communication with the bridgetender for that one! The locals are quite proud of their bridges and absolutely loved that story; I told it multiple times to visitors each day I was working and it never failed to bring a smile. 

Finally we made it through a much roomier lock than the snug one we had leaving Whitehaven. As we came upriver into town, we passed a replica of the "Matthew," the ship John Cabot used to discover Newfoundland, motorsailing downriver.  It represents an era in history about 150 years before ours. We acknowledged each other, one tall ship replica to another. They rang their bell, we fired our cannon. We'd enjoy visits to each other's ships during the time we were in port. We docked, finally, just in time for a weekend maritime festival, a great way to kick off our week in what would ultimately become one of my top 3 favorite cities in England (the other two were Ramsgate and Falmouth).