Tall Ships Festival – Greenwich:

Two items have come to my attention, well, I’ve known awhile, but the latter is now going to happen too, rather than being an idea.

In 2014 the Tall Ships came up the River Thames to Greenwich – Whimbrel was sailing down river as most of the vessels came up and it felt strange being on the end of many camera lenses: we were tacking down through them all!

A Polish 3-master berthedat the upper end of Blackwall Reach…

It was an amazing sight, however, I felt that we should have stayed up ‘in town’ to get a better feel for what was going on.

One of the vessels passed as we approached Greenhithe for an overnight stop.

The 2017 event is over the Easter weekend, 13th to 16th April with ships departing on the 16th. The ‘race’ finishes in Quebec on 18th July 2017… One can go on line and look up details, as they’re currently known:

http://www.royalgreenwich.gov.uk/info/100003/community_and_living/1589/tall_ships_festivals

Battle of the Medway:

The second event is taking place on the River Medway in June 2017. This is to commemorate the Dutch raid on Chatham (& Sheerness) which took place in 1667. It was a time of strife between the governments of Holland and England (& Scotland) over trading – the spice islands. We ultimately gave up a little island in what is now Indonesia for New York!

The British and Dutch have had an exceedingly long partnership, and this commemoration furthers that cause. But this was a time when we were unprepared: the guns in Upnor Castle had no balls!

A huge number of Dutch yachts are expected to visit the river during the festival. I understand that measures are being taken to increase river berthing, up amongst the ‘lights’ to cope with this…  If you want to be there, keep an eye on the web site of the Medway & Swale Boating Association: this is where you’ll get information. This is an almost essential web site to watch: http://msba.org.uk/

See you there…