Aventura takes her message across the Channel
At 0015 local time on Saturday morning, May 24, Aventura finally set off on her long awaited maiden voyage. The relatively short 240 miles passage across the English Channel from Cherbourg to London was a prelude to the longer voyage to Greenland due to start on Saturday, May 31. A mixture of rainy squalls with gusty winds followed by calm patches, kept her crew on their toes while dodging scores of ships in this, one of the busiest stretches of water in the world. It was also a good opportunity to assess Aventura‘s offshore capabilities during proper offshore conditions, a test which she shrugged off nonchalantly, as befits a boat conceived and built to confront the real challenges the ocean will throw at her.
A fast sail allowed us to keep our 0400 rendezvous with low tide in the Thames Estuary which made it possibly to cover the sixty miles to London on one tide. As we got closer to the capital we passed through the Thames Barrier, a defensive set of lock gates that are deployed when strong easterly winds combined with a high tide threaten to flood London. Out of the gates, my heart skipped a beat as we passed the former Royal Albert Dock, where the first Aventura left on her own maiden voyage. And now, almost exactly forty years later, here I am on the fourth Aventura sailing up the same Old River Thames, soon to leave on perhaps the most daring voyage of my long sailing life.
Aventura sails across the Zero Meridian past the Greenwich Observatory.
