27 August 2010; Tilbury, England.

It was very breezy when we arrived at the North East Spit pilot station just north of Ramsgate in Kent. This is where the pilot boat is docked and where the pilots board the boat for a15 minute journey to get to the Pilotage area. This morning they had a very bumpy ride as the wind was from the North East and it pushed the waves straight into the Thames estuary. Visibility was not that great due to overcoming showers but our radars are good and the fairway is laid out with big buoys that reflect nicely on the screens. Yesterday I wrote about the guard ships around the oil platforms; these are not the only guard vessels out there. At the moment they are laying a telephone/data (fiber optic) cable between England and the Netherlands and that is quite a process. First there is a ship that plows a trench for the cable, then the cable is laid and lastly there is a ship that fills up that trench again. The cable goes about 30 feet under the sand, so it is quite a trench that it is being made. Eventually the track of this cable will be marked on the charts as a no anchor area but until that time the cable has to be protected. For this purpose there are guard ships slowly steaming up and down the track of the cable. The funny thing of it all is that the guard ships are chartered fishing boats and the biggest challenge they are guarding against are other fishing boats.

With the pilot on board at 05.30 we sailed slowly up the river estuary. Slowly being a necessity as the first part is very shallow. This is the bar where all the silt of the river is being deposited when the river current looses its velocity. In a similar way as with the Amazon and many other estuary rivers in the world. The 7.3 meter draft of the Prinsendam does not give that much of a problem but for other ships it means that they only can go up river with the flood tide that can add up to 4 meters of extra water and thus depth to the river. We just go slowly to avoid the ship from shaking too much, when the speed/depth ratio becomes too much and to avoid the squatting of the ship.

For us a great point of interest is the passage past the old Shell refinery. This is being converted into a large container terminal and the work goes unbelievably fast. With very sail by we see the terminal taking more and more shape. The sea/ river defenses are getting higher and higher, more stone blocks are in place and two Dutch dredgers are pumping enormous quantities of sand ashore to create a flat surface where later the containers will stand. This sand is dredged out of the Thames river right in front of the terminal. Sand that otherwise would have to be transported down river to keep the fairway open anyway. So this helps everybody. (http://webapps.dpworld.com/portal/page/portal/LONDON_GATEWAY/Environment/Marine/Protecting-the-Marine-Environment)

By 09.00 we approached the dock and as I had ordered a tugboat, we had to get a river pilot onboard, as Tilbury International Cruise terminal is just inside the Thames-river-Pilotage boundary. If I dock the ship without a tug, the sea pilot is allowed to supervise me, but when a tug is used, it requires the river pilot. So he relayed my orders to the tugboat which then pushed the stern of the Prinsendam against the wind towards the dock. As it was ebbing we docked, nose into the ebb, starboard side alongside the pontoon, facing upriver.

Here we will stay for two days. Tomorrow is a port day for the guests who will be leaving the day after. The boarding guests will have a quiet overnight alongside and we will be leaving coming Sunday at 0800 hrs. I cannot stay longer as the dock has been reserved that day for the Marco Polo which will arrive at 0900.

I spent the day shopping for the ship. I have my car parked in the terminal and thus have easy transport to the large shopping centers in the area. Normally we have to order everything through ship chandlers but they have a lot of overheads of course as they have to charge for their working hours, profit margins and for the transport. A captain gets paid anyway and thus comes a lot cheaper. So B&Q was a prime target today, for kitchen grouting, carpet glue, cordless drills and super glue and as I drive a hybrid car, even the petrol costs came only to half price.