Commonwealth Games Queen’s Baton Relay in Royal Albert Dock

The Queen’s Platinum Jubilee celebration weekend coincided with the visit to London of the Queen’s Commonwealth Games Baton and as part of a number of events across the capital several stages of the relay took place in the Royal Docks area of the London Borough of Newham.

One aspect of this included the transportation of the Baton by boat through parts of the royal group of docks from near City Hall to Royal Albert Wharf.

QXDBR2022 Flotilla in Royal Albert Dock

Billed by the event organisers as an “eye-popping 25-boat flotilla” the reality was somewhat less inspiring and a real shame that there was no easy way to determine from which watersports organisations the participating craft came from.

Of the 13 vessels that actually took part two where from the Metropolitan Police’s Marine Unit that provided two of their fast patrol RIBs to provide security and as a camera platform (there was little chance of marauding vessels in the otherwise deserted expanse of the Docks!).

Marine Police RIB

The locally based Windy Pandas Dragon Boat club provided one of the 4 Dragon Boats in the event and also had the honour of carrying the Baton. Other boats were crewed by the Typhoon Dragon Boat club, the Thames Dragons Dragon Boat club and a forth, as yet, unidentified club.

WINDY PANDAS with the QCG Baton

WINDY PANDAS with the QCG Baton

WINDY PANDAS with the QCG Baton

WINDY PANDAS with the QCG Baton

TYPHOON DBC

THAMES DRAGONS DBC

? DBC

There were also three rowing teams from the London Otters Rowing Club.

LORC

LORC

LORC

Unfortunately the final rowing boat didn’t make it all the way to the end of the Royal Albert Dock and turned back without the participants being identified – this rowing boat was also accompanied by a RIB operated by the Atlantic Pacific Lifeboat organisation (soon to build their new Royal Docks training base).

Rowing Boat

ATLANTIC PACIFIC

The final 2 boats were provided by the Docks management company, one safety boat and one workboat that was used by the event organisers with more security personnell and photographers on board.

RoDMA 1

Good to witness a piece of history but a shame the event was over promised and under delivered.

A few more pictures from the event can be seen here,

Changing cranes

The KGV Lock has long been used as a location for loading and unloading equipment and plant from barges and pontoons due to the fact it is a non-tidal protected area of water that make such operations safer and easier to undertake.

KGV Lock with working areas

There is a question mark hanging over the future of this facility though as the future development plans for the area show new buildings much closer to the dock edge and less convenient road access routes – something that seems to go against the London Plan and the protection of the Blue Ribbon network!!

Anyway, back to the present and a recent where one large crane was taken off a pontoon and a slightly smaller was loaded in it’s place.

The pontoon was provided by the Livett’s Group and Thamescraft Dry Docking provided the Emilia D and the Dalby Venture to keep the pontoon in place and the latter also had a supply of wooden beams used to help the cranes drive off and on the pontoon.

Operations such as this one are good examples of #STEM in action with plenty of physics and mechanics involved when it comes to moving heavy items of plant off and on a floating pontoon whilst keeping everything safe and secure!

Both of the cranes were Liebherr mobile cranes, with a LR 1110 Crawler crane operated by Hawks Crane Hire being unloaded first.

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Then a LTR 1100 operated by Sarens took its place.

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The following fast-motion video shows the action with the first crane also assisting with the moving of the boards to assist the loading of the second crane.

Flying machines in KGV Dock

The waters of the King George V Dock in North Woolwich are usually pretty quiet with only the occasional tug or boat passing through but for one afternoon a year they become an international sporting arena.

This is when the European Freestyle Jet Ski Championship arrives in Newham to host a round of the competition in the UK by setting up camp at the Tereza Joanne boat floating venue in London’s Docklands.

Over the course of the 5 hour event there were qualifying and finals for each of 4 experience or power categories and a best trick category with men and women, young and not so young, competitors from across the world taking part.

The event generated a range of freestyle moves and some trills and spills as looping or barrel rolling a jet ski doesn’t always quite work as planned!!

Overall an entertaining afternoon in the sun watching the competitors going through their paces.

Unfortunately the event wasn’t that well promoted and most of the spectators appeared to be family and friends of the competitors  – a real shame that RoDMA, Newham Council nor the local press appeared to promote the event and this has to raise doubts about the event returning in future years.

Is it a boat, is it a car……?

Well the answer is in fact that is it both (but not at the same time!). It is the latest vehicle developed by Gibbs Amphibians and is both a water and road legal vehicle.

Over the last few days Gibbs have been trialing the vehicle known as the ‘Humdinga’ along the river Thames in London.

They have also made a number of runs down the river to North Woolwich to use the recently repaired Port of London Authority slipway at Bargehouse Road to show off the versatility of the vehicle.

As you can imagine it causes some interesting reactions when a boat drives out of the river and then heads off down the road!

It is also interesting that it is no slouch on the water with impressive acceleration and speed!

It must have caused more than a few double-take moments for other river users too.

The team were out on the Thames again the next day doing another high speed run up to North Woolwich.

Then in the afternoon the action moved to the Royal Docks (sadly, again, no information from RoDMA about these events in the Docks – yet another missed PR opportunity!) with Gibbs bringing four of their vehicles out to play.

These were the Humdinga which is a amphibious utility vehicle:

The Aquada which is an amphibious sports car:

The Terraquad which is an amphibious Utility Terrain Vehicle (UTV):

The final vehcile was the Quadski XL which is a quad bike combined with a jetski:

There are a number of other vehicles in their range which can be seen here.

Cargo ships return to KGV

The 23^rd July 2014 started out a routine enough day with a few ships heading up and down the Thames.

Then late morning the Wilson Bilbao was noted heading up river – nothing unusual as other Wilson Shipping vessels had visited in the past.

However, today was different, as rather than heading up river through Gallions Reach the Wilson Bilbao was on the wrong side of the river and was starting to turn to starboard.

This was a rare and historic event – cargo operations returned to London’s Royal Docks – for the first time in many years, if not decades.

The result of a collaborative effort that saw the Royal Docks Management Authority, 3 ship operators, a port handling company and a construction company (amongst others) working together to support building projects in London.

Wilson Bilbao arrived at the King George V lock first with a load of aggregates which were off-loaded on to the dock side using a grab crane – I’m guessing over 1000 tons worth – which took about 3 hours.

Grab crane waiting for business

Wilson Bilbao opens up

Grabbing another load

Tons of gravel

Later during the afternoon the London based Yasam Rose arrived and whilst she locked in the Wilson Bilbao self-manoeuvred across to the other side of the lock to then allow Yasam Rose to take her place next to the pile of aggregates.

Yasam Rose arrives @ KGV

Yasam Rose approaches the dock

Lining up for loading

Once alongside the loading commenced. Being a smaller ship the Yasam Rose had to make two trips in order to move the entire load to it’s final destination of Battersea.

As a result of this operation 100s of lorry journeys across London were prevented and the docks once again did what they were designed and built to do – handle cargo – perhaps a mere fraction of the tonnage of it’s heyday but great to see two working cargo ships in the Royal Docks.

Not sure if this was a one-off venture or a proof of concept – hopefully the latter as given that London, and specifically the Royal Docks, will continue to see building projects that need supplies it would seem that a demand exists – whether if is financially viable and a practical solution remains to be seen.

Some more pictures can be seen here.