Cruising Yachtsmen
Sorry! You may be on this page because you're thinking of cruising to Kings Lynn and you want to read all about the facilities for visiting yachts and this website is opposing the building of a marina! No wonder you're cross! Look, the marina the council are planning is basically a scenic backdrop for a development of flats and houses, intended to boost the eventual selling price and so sweeten the deal for some (as yet unknown) developer. You can probably gauge their actual commitment to the cruising community from the level of facilities currently offered here, which are nill, nada, zilch! Honestly, you'll find better (actually, lots better, I've cruised there) at Out Skerries, Shetland!
Stuff you need to know: Kings Lynn
Conservancy Board are the port authority: their website gives details of tides and navigation aids
and there's a really useful sketchmap of the river if you are bound up to or down from Denver Sluice.
If you are navigating in the fresh water, you can get nearly all the way to Kings Lynn on the Relief Channel,
which is wide, deep, and pretty well totally traffic free: from the tail sluice, a tarmac footpath/cycle path runs
alongside the Great Ouse straight into town: about 2 miles. Mostly the banks of the Relief Channel are
reed-fringed and unsuitable for mooring, but just before the tail sluice there is a
short piece of staging on the East side of the Relief Channel in front of the Ouse Amateur Sailing Club's building
where cruising boats sometimes tie up: the depth alongside isn't massive, so be a bit cautious if the water
level is low or the sluices are open.
[Waterlevel Update: Palm Paper (massive new factory currently
building in South Lynn) are going to take up their process water from the Relief Channel: as a result
(reliable sources say) the water levels are to be held higher than previously.]
The OASC race here on Sunday mornings (most of the year) and Wednesday
evenings in the summer. What their attitude to boats alongside the staging at these times would be I do not know.
Boats bound into Kings Lynn from the sea are best advised to refer to The Tidal Havens of the Wash and Humber by Henry Irving (ISBN-10: 0852885075), which (as far as I know) is still the best reference for the area, but up-to-date charts and the latest information from the Kings Lynn Conservancy Board are vital: the Wash is a VERY mobile environment!
Reference to the KLCB's sketch map shows the Sailing Club on the East side by the ferry landing between the Harbour Master's office and the buoy yard: the club is open lunch times and evenings (but not Sundays) with an excellent range of beers and food. There are showers!
Unfortunately the visitors moorings maintained by the Great Ouse Boating Association
(see the KLCB sketch plan again: 'GOBA moorings')
are a really long way away (about a mile away). You may need to watch your draught on these if you have a fin keel:
from memory there was about 4 ft/1.2metres at low water springs last time I hung on one (in a 5ft/1.5m draft boat. :( ).
At your own risk (naturally!), there's probably enough water to lie afloat alongside the South Quay at its extreme
southern end, by the (now disused) grain silos. The siding is sheet piling, so you'd need fender boards, and
the rise and fall is massive (see the KLCB tide tables)
so you need some nice long, strong, warps. The
KLCB survey data gives a good idea of depth alongside.
I hope this page has included a few helpful observations for visiting sailors: if you have any suggestions or corrections (or for any other reason), please don't hesitate to contact web@kingslynnmarina.com.
Afterthoughts:
The tail sluice of the Relief Channel. You can see which sluices are open by looking at the counter balances:
in this pic, the right hand pair (the left-hand sluice gate is undergoing repair). The red buoys support a
chain to stop boats approaching the sluice. The cranes on the right of the pic are at the Palm Paper site.