Night Locking at Liverpool (MV Dirona Channel)

We arrive at the entrance to the busy port of Liverpool UK towards the end of the day, cruise up the River Mersey to Liverpool as dusk fades to night, and then pass through the Brunswick Lock and tie off at Liverpool Marina at night.

The River Mersey has a tidal range of 33ft (10m) on spring tides, the second highest in Britain after the River Severn. The banks dry at low tide, so most of the Liverpool docks are behind locks. With our draft, the earliest we could enter Brunswick Lock to reach Liverpool Marina is with 22ft (6.7m) of tide. This was well after dark at 5:45pm following an overnight run from Belfast. This is not the ideal time to be approaching an unfamiliar area and entering a lock back lit by a busy city but weather conditions and tides made that our best option.

With so many lights ashore, Brunswick Lock was hard to even find in the shore-side clutter of light until we were quite close. As we neared, the strongly lit locks became visible over the lights of the city behind. The Brunswick Lock gate is 8m wide, so we can easily fit our 5m beam through with a meter and a half, or five feet, to spare on each side. But it sure looked tight as we approached.

For additional context see http://mvdirona.com/2018/02/night-loc...