Friday, October 10, 2014

Natural Navigation Picture Puzzle

This picture was taken looking directly across the river towards Fulham on Putney Embankment where downriver is SE.

Two questions:

  1. What was the state of the tide?
  2. What was the wind direction?

4 comments:

Chris Partridge said...

OK I'll straight for the obvious:
Full
SW

JP said...

Yup, Tristan would be proud of you!

Chris Partridge said...

Yay!
It's an interesting picture actually. The water is very high on the embankment in the background, but that doesn't necessarily indicate it is at the HW mark. You can actually see the currents wallowing around by the wavelets. But the confirmation is the boat. Being a motor boat with no significant keel, she should be wind-bound rather than tide-bound but in the river they normally align with the current. The absence of any current means the wind is holding her across the stream.

JP said...

Well explained, that's exactly what I saw. The current is usually strong enough that boats point upriver or downriver apart from at LW and HW when they tend to point towards the wind.

There's a wind vane on top of the London Rowing Club that matched the boat's pointing angle pretty well.