Sailing AKICOLJ

[bunn]

Does anyone have any idea how long it would take to sail from the Solent to Thanet?  I do not mind about the tides, can adjust them to whatever is handy.  It's summer time, and there is a fair bit of wind. 

The ship would be a smallish one, and I am assuming for the moment that the sailors are in something of a hurry, and therefore may employ both sail and oars at least to get offshort in a hurry.     Oh yes, and they are Saxons. :-D

I am assuming that Saxon ships did have sails, because I think the argument they didn't is more than a bit weak, although I'm guessing very likely they would be restricted in their ability to tack or sail close to the wind.

( I have been meaning to carve a Saxon dragon-ship figurehead for approximately 20 years now, and I still have not done it. Maybe one day...)

Comments

[king-pellinor.livejournal.com]

That's what, 150 or 200 miles?

With a good wind you might make up to 6 or 7 mph in a 15-20' boat (he guesses, with little information). So if you sailed all day and night you might just about do it in not much more than a day. Assuming that the wind backed round at the right time so it always followed you, and the tide didn't turn, and there were no heavy seas, and you could cut all the corners. Might be better to allow a few days for the trip at least.

I think Napoleonic ships would reckon 200 miles a very good day's sailing in open water. Google tells me that the distance record for a clipper is 436 nautical miles in 24 hours.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

Hmm, I feared as much. That means they probably would need to come in to the coast for at least one night. Bugger. I wonder where would be a good place for that...

I'm thinking a bigger ship than 20 feet though - it needs to be able to get a reasonable sized raiding party into it, and surely you couldn't squeeze more than about 4-5 Saxons with axes etc into a 20ft boat?

The Sutton Hoo ship was 85 feet: one assumes that was a biggun, so I'm thinking maybe 40-50 foot-ish.

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

This article here (http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/nauti_0154-1854_1998_act_14_1_1202#) suggests that Saxon ships might have managed about 10 knots (a knot is just over one mile an hour, I believe) if the wind was in their favour, but were much much slower when sailing into the wind. Since the prevailing wind is from the south-west, I expect your Saxons would probably have the wind more or less in their favour.

Not that I really know anything about boats, beyond watching them potter around in the Solent.

[crazyscot.livejournal.com]

A knot is a nautical mile per hour. A nautical mile is a smidgen over 1.15 statute miles.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

Ooh, nifty! The stuff about how easy the replica is to beach is very useful too.

[carmarthen.livejournal.com]

I vaguely recall from my searching on Roman sailing that tacking (or rather the type of sail setup needed for tacking) was invented much later in history. But I'm not sure when...

[bunn.livejournal.com]

I think Romans used lateen sails (which can be tacked, though apparently a bit awkwardly) in the Med, but square sails in the Channel and the North Sea. But I think it's reasonable for me to just give them a following wind most of the way to Thanet, so they shouldn't really need to tack much.