Intrepid Travels

Vessel Name: Intrepid Elk
Vessel Make/Model: Outremer catamaran 51
Hailing Port: Fremantle
Crew: Robert and Revle Elks
16 May 2017
06 October 2016
30 September 2016
22 September 2016
18 September 2016
17 September 2016
14 September 2016
13 September 2016
12 September 2016
10 September 2016
04 September 2016
01 September 2016
31 August 2016
30 August 2016
27 August 2016
24 August 2016
23 August 2016
21 August 2016
19 August 2016
Recent Blog Posts
16 May 2017

Cherbourg encore

We are reunited with Intrepid Elk after a winter/summer separation and it is good to be home again. IE has had a facelift and her shiny white hulls are dazzling once more. She has a beautiful new bimini (shade cover) over the helm seat, which Robert designed and which was fabricated in Portsmouth and [...]

06 October 2016

IE preparation for winter

Our sailing days for this year are over and we are once again busy getting IE ready for a winter in the northern hemisphere. This year, she will be in the water for most of the time, with a short interlude on land in a large painting shed, where she will have her hulls painted. In order to get her into [...]

30 September 2016

Cherbourg, France

It was an inky black moonless night as we slipped out of the river and across the sand bar with fishing vessel Emma Louise behind us. Revle was on the bowsprit with a spotlight looking for hazards ahead. I was at the helm, peering at our chartplotter and concentrating on following our inward track. [...]

22 September 2016

Plymouth

We made a motoring passage of 35 miles to Plymouth Sound, then battled against strong currents up the Tamar River to an anchorage at West Mud where we spent a peaceful night. Plymouth has been a major naval base for centuries and we had some close encounters with modern navy ships in the harbour. We [...]

18 September 2016

Falmouth

Our passage to Falmouth took us past The Lizard, a projecting headland with a ferocious tidal race. We passed a little too close and got caught in the race which was too bumpy for comfort. Approaching the Falmouth harbour, we had the excitement of crossing our track from June 2015 when we made landfall [...]

17 September 2016

Newlyn

We left the Isles of Scilly early in the morning to catch a light northerly wind to Land's End and the fishing port of Newlyn, just south of Penzance. We couldn't believe our luck, having another gentle passage through one of the most treacherous and notorious waterways in northern Europe. We galloped [...]

Wallesea Island

30 June 2015
We left Ramsgate Harbour in glorious sunshine at noon. Before leaving we realised that we have completely messed up our tide planning. The passage is technically the most complex we have ever done with 10 sectors passing through nautical features with names such as Fishermans Gat, South West Sunk, East Barrow Sands, Mid Point Spitway, etc. The whole estuary has forests of wind turbines in discrete farms - Thanet, London Array, Kentish Flats, Gunfleet Sands, Inner Gabbard and Galloper. It is all very impressive and I have read that the installed capacity is about 16 GW. We motor sailed north past the chalk cliffs of North Foreland into the muddy estuary and soon found that in scale the estuary feels like the open sea, apart from distant wind farms.

We altered our route to sail a little closer to one of the wind farms but did not commit to sailing through the forest of wind turbines - which is an option. Maybe next time. The shallow passage through South West Sunk proved to be more than deep enough removing the final worry as we turned west into the ebbing current. We could see Foulness Sands as the sea level dropped and we were pleased to see many seals sunbaking on the mud. The north shore of the estuary and mouth of the Crouch River became visible and the journey was almost over. After about 5 miles we arrived at Essex Marina and tie up alongside, with a line of Dutch canal barges.
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