Foulger’s Gat, pronounced ‘Fullgers’ is a swatchway across the Long Sand connecting the Black Deep to the Knock Deep. It has a least depth of around 3m and is now surrounded by the London Array windfarm, although still usable by yachts.
Such crossings over the sands come and go over a timescale of, perhaps, decades: the Ray Sand shows how quickly depths can alter.
(depths in fathoms & feet)
The 1907 Reynolds chart shows a least depth of a quarter fathom (0.4m), a 1928 chart shows 13′ although the 195411952 Kentish Knock and the Naze to the Nore corrected to 1954 chart shows 11 feet (3.3m,) and so the depth increased rapidly but also varied over over the Twentieth Century
Brian Foulger was a yachtsman who sailed from the Royal Burnham Yacht Club2Contributors on the ybw.com forum, thanks to tillergirl, Jan Harber and DanTribe. He was a keen offshore racer in his wooden yacht Ailish, and later Shilia. His yacht Ailish III was rolled in the tempestous conditions of the 1979 Fastnet Race. Reportedly, he later described the conditions as being “a bit choppy”.
He was credited with finding, or at least being an early user of, the swatchway that we know as Foulger’s Gat. He reported details of this to the Admiralty Hydrographer who later issued a chart correction and assigned the name. This must have been in the late 1990s as the feature does not appear on the 2001 Imray C1 but has appeared and is buoyed by two SWMs in the August 2002 edition. The construction of the windfarm later in the 2000s resulted in a kink in the channel which has necessitated another SWM.
Sadly, he did not see the gat named on the chart as he died in 2000.
A point to bear in mind is the difficulty of navigating through these swatchways: Long Sand is 12nM offshore, so no landmarks are available, earlier in the Twentieth Century there were some beacons erected but these have collapsed in recent decades. The advent of GPS, of course, nullifies this problem.
Notes
Neither Brian Foulger nor Ailish appears in the Royal Ocean Racing Club – Racing Results Archive at RORC which only goes back to 2007 also 1979 Fastnet Race – Wikipedia does not list Foulger or Ailish. However, both he an the yacht were clearly there as recounted in Fastnet ’79: the story of Ailish III by Len Gardner.
There is a Brian Foulger Family History website. However, he is not this one but has provided the following information: This is probably the correct man: Brian Foulger born 11.12.1917 West Ham died 14.7.2000 Chelmsford
Footnotes
- 11952 Kentish Knock and the Naze to the Nore corrected to 1954
- 2
- 11952 Kentish Knock and the Naze to the Nore corrected to 1954
- 2