North Sea Week: More space in the Outer Elbe

In the past, commercial vessels with large draughts came quite close to the incoming ships at the mouth of the Elbe, causing confusion for sailors who had not studied the nautical chart in detail. The reason on the Lüchtergrund. North of Neuwerk, the Elbe fairway widens considerably, with the green buoy line running close to Scharhörn and the centre ground towards Kugelbake. The northern red buoy line makes a wide arc close to the Gelbsand and Großer Vogelsand. There were up to 1.5 nautical miles between the fairway buoys. Plenty of space, apparently: this is not a navigable channel for large commercial vessels with a deep draught, as the Neue Lüchtergrund lay between them with water depths of less than ten metres. Only ships with a shallower draught were able to sail upstream along the red buoys through the so-called Norderrinne and, as it should be, on the right-hand side of the fairway. Commercial shipping with a large draught was sent - with an exception to the right-hand navigation requirement - close to the south of the Neuer Lüchtergrund through the "middle channel", i.e. actually on the wrong side of the fairway.

Now there is an important change for the North Sea Weeks participants and every Cuxhaven-Helgoland sailor in the Notice to Mariners 36/14 of WSA Cuxhaven: "Widening of the middle channel as a normal fairway and cancellation of the north channel as an outgoing fairway."

Winter storms and the strong tidal current of the Elbe have removed a lot of sand from the southern edge of the New Lüchtergrund and deposited it in the area of the Norderrinne. As a result, the Norderrinne had to be abandoned as a buoyed shipping lane from 10 April; all outgoing ships now pass through the Mittelrinne. The red fairway buoys formerly positioned on the Norderrinne are moved to positions south of the Neuer Lüchtergrund. The cardinal buoys to demarcate the centre channel from the New Lüchtergrund will be removed.

The North Sea Week participants in the MINOX Cup Cuxhaven-Helgoland on Whit Sunday morning and the racers in the Sundowner Regatta on the Friday evening before can therefore look forward to this. This means that there is more space available for the regattas from Cuxhaven to Helgoland without significant commercial shipping, and therefore also more tactical options. However, orientation has become more difficult, as the buoys that used to mark the boundary to the sands have become fewer. Up-to-date chart material is therefore important, such as the newly published chart set "DIE ELBE".

You can watch a summary of the last North Sea Week here:

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