Chatham

We sailed up the Medway in very light winds on another gloriously hot day. I'm sure this weather won't last but at the moment we are being totally spoilt. Moored up at Victory Marina, a very long jetty that opened straight into the historic dockyard.

Some very interesting exhibits about ship building here. An absolutely huge number of wooden ships were made here including the Victory. One of the slips was covered with a domed wooden roof. It was made using the old shipwrights skills, and was a bit like being in the up turned hull of a boat with huge stringers and planks fitted together perfectly. It was an awesome piece of carpentry.  There were also many steel ships and submarines built here, the last in 1962.

A very nice man from the Historical Society gave me the record of the Firedrake, and information about my uncle who went down with it when it was sunk in 1942 whilst on the Atlantic convoys.

We sat on the boat all afternoon being serenaded by military music, compliments of a lone bagpipe player walking up and down the harbour wall above us. We set off at five for the trip back to Queenborough and
short tacked Tehari II down the Medway, between the moored boats. It was a bit like tacking in the Hamble but without so much leisure traffic about, good fun though.
We've only used the engine for three hours so far, since leaving Brighton. Most of that was in the Thames Estuary when the wind died away completely and we had to avoid big shipping.