NB Ceilidh - Ship's Blog: Saturday 31st August 2013 - Victoria Park to Lime House Marina

Set off after breakfast for the short hop (4 locks) down to Lime House Marina. The Docklands skyscrapers began to loom larger lock by lock. Our way was somewhat impeded by a thick mat of duck weed that covered most of the canal - we had to take care Maisy didn't think it was grass and jump off!

Arrived down the last lock and into the marina - full of big boats! We soon found our mooring and went across to the marina office to check in - we are booked to lock out onto the Thames at 8am tomorrow morning some 3.5 hours before high tide to give us the advantage of the flood tide. Jeremy from CRT asked if we would 'look after' another boat that had arrived without a VHF radio which would involve us travelling together. We were quite happy with this! It is a requirement of the Port of London Authority that all craft using the Thames through central London have VHF, lodge a cruising plan, and listen out to instructions on channel 14. As it happened contractors were working on Battersea Bridge with some arches closed. We had to contact London VTS for permission to pass through and be allocated an arch for transit.

Rang Mark to see if he was free to join us tomorrow - he is and will arrive tonight ready for the early start.

With the afternoon now spare we walked across to St Katherines Dock where the Clipper Round the World race is due to start from tomorrow. Had a look at all the boats - and crews. Poor things, they dont know what will hit them! Their start will be at 1.30pm - after we have gone through so we hopefully wont get in the way. On our walk back we saw two working narrowboats chugging back up the Thames. One turned out to be our diesel boat so we were able to fill up once he had locked through. At this point CRT phoned me - another narrowboat had turned up without a radio - would I mind very much..... so Ceilidh was now leading a convoy of three boats!

Mark arrived around 10pm and I walked up to meet him at Lime House Station. On the way back to the boat we looked over the sea wall - the Thames was very choppy!