Thoughts on long Tideway paddle, aiming for 6 hours on the water: The timing throws up some interesting conundrums.
Given a following tide and a reasonable pace I’d expect you could get as far as the QE2 bridge or Tilbury area in 3 hours. Of course this could be an over estimate as conditions that far down could be choppy and slow you down, but your super tanker should cut through with ease! Anyway there’s a tide timing point at Tilbury to get an idea of the timing.
so using Sat 4th April as an example
Leave Barn Elms midday 12.00 (11:00 GMT)
paddle 3 hours down river aiming to arrive at Tilbury for Low tide at 14:52 (13:52 GMT)
turn and come back on the flood tide 3 hours to Barn Elms
However, Low Tide at Barn Elms (Hammersmith Bridge) will be 17:30 (16:30 GMT), 2hrs after London Bridge at 15:30 (14:30 GMT). So you will be paddling back on the slack between tides - heavy and slow, so could take an extra 30 minutes or more. On a like for like 3 hour each way you would think you’d get back by 17:52, but I reckon that could be 18:30 or later because of the slack water affect - over that distance it could even add an hour, so total paddling time is now 7 hours, 1 hour more than intended - the last drag back would certainly test the stamina and resolve!!
Alternative would be to set out an hour later - downside would be the last section downriver will be against the tide in order to get far enough down to give a 3 hour return leg with the tide. As paddling time is the objective rather than absolute distance paddled, this should not be an issue and could help the mental side to have a mid session fight against the tide. So, leave Barns at 1pm and paddle for 3 hours. This should give you 2 hours with the tide and then the last hour against it, so you may only get as far as Woolwich/Thamesmead, rather than Tilbury, but you need to keep going until at least 4 pm and a bit. Then turn at say 4.30 pm (not forgetting to cross to the other bank!) and you should then get 2.5 hours with the tide coming back to arrive at 7 pm.
As the return should be quicker overall, you need to keep paddling out until at least 4:15 or 4:30 - the further out you go the faster the return as the tide will have built up speed and you shouldn’t catch up with the slack lo tide as LT Hammersmith is 5.30 pm so you’ll be 1.5 hours after that.
so choose a weekend with a middle of day low tide and off you go!
My head now hurts with all this black art calculation, so I’m off to lunch!
NB there may be a deliberate mistake in the calculations so do double check
NBB you should check with PLA about transiting the Barrier
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