Bradwell Baffle Wings Racing Secret

I took a walk out on the sea wall at Bradwell this weekend to take a look at the progress that had been made on the removal of the wings attached to the discharge outlet from the old Bradwell power station.

As you can see from the photographs, the work barges were still on site, and it looked as if work was still going on, but the steel walls have now been removed almost completely.

Here's an official update.

The central section will remain in place throughout the 2012 sailing season to be removed at a later date, but with the wings gone, it'll give a different outlook to the approach to Bradwell.

Looking at the missing wings caused me to recall an incident a few years ago whilst following Tommy Mills back up the river in a Blackwater Joint Racing Committee race. The wind was coming not straight out of the river, but at an angle of about 30 degrees to the baffle wall. At about 15 boat lengths from the end of the baffle, not sure whether we would clear it, my boat was discussing whether to tack inside the baffle or, as the West Mersea sailors we'd had a few beers with the previous week had suggested was the better option, ducking the baffle and continuing across to the Tollesbury bank of the river, where there were gains to be had.

Tommy Mills - Rocker (Impala)

We watched as Rocker got very close to the end of the wall and we decided to stand on knowing that we wouldn't get within 5 boat lengths of the end of the wall on our current track. To our surprise, as Rockers bow passed the end of the wall she immediately began to point higher. The wall, which at not much after low water was quite high above the boat, caused the wind to change direction around Rocker giving them a visible lift of about 25 degrees. Keeping close to the wall Tommy's boat was now pointing almost directly towards Thirslet whilst we were both too far away from the end of the wall to feel any affect of the local wind shift, and had sailed too far passed the wall to be able to tack back and make the same approach as Rocker.

Applying this single application of local knowledge had us beat. But we added the information to our own knowledge bank with the full intention of using it to our benefit at some time in the future. Unfortunately the opportunity never came and now the wall is gone I'm happily sharing this knowledge with everyone sailing the Blackwater.


Don't forget to update your charts!