Thur 18 April 2013 GOBA Moorings Lt Ouse

Last night was lively with the wind gusting up to 30MPH and we were partly sheltered by the banks.

This morning it was bright sunshine but still a stiff breeze. There is a fishing lake by the lock and weir and since we were last here it has seen some serious landscaping.We waited until the cruiser moored ahead of us had departed before attempting to wind, I needed all the space available in these weather conditions. At 10-30 AM we set off forward towards the weir, the plan was to put the stern in the entrance channel to the lock so the flow from the weir took the bow round. The wind was blowing in the opposite direction to the water flow.
At the first attempt the bows shot round quite fast in the flow and I was unable to get the stern into the lock chamber, everything went well until we were almost 90° round and then the wind was stronger than the flow and I couldn’t get her round. On the second attempt I got much closer to the lock channel before starting the turn and loads of reverse pulled us into the channel, I was then to work the stern towards the lock and then drive out , down stream but into the wind. You can see the layout of the lock and weir on Google Earth 

As we carried on downstream the wind continued to freshen gusting 45 MPHIt wasn’t long before we reached the sluice that drops the excess flow into the Cut Off channel at times of flood and then it was on to the aqueduct to cross the Cut Off channel its self. This is quite a wide structure, probably about 60 feet. We were then heading out into more open country and I could see dust storms all around us, luckily they didn’t have to much effect, just dusty eyes as the surrounding land close to the rive is mainly lakes, woods and grazing marsh.  Although we were protected from the dust we were not protected from the wind and this made the waves even larger. I have a short video but the upload connection is too slow to add it here.

By now we were approaching the GOBA moorings where we had stopped on Tuesday night and there at the end was the cruiser we had moored behind both last night and the night before, so we decided to call it a day and pull in behind them. The next moorings we would be coming to were our moorings at the end of the river where it joins the Gt. Ouse.