Can I sail through wind farms?
QAs a South coast sailor, I don’t come across that many wind farms in my home waters, but this summer, my husband and I went sailing with some friends on their boat around the Thames Estuary. We were staggered by the scale of the wind farms there, but opted to sail around them as they often seem to be built in shallower water over sandbanks, but it got us thinking: If we wanted to, would we be allowed to sail through a wind farm, and if we did so, what precautions would we have to take? Pam Jones
Theo Stocker replies: As a general rule, there will be an exclusion zone of 500m around turbines and working vessels while a wind farm is under construction. This is lifted, however, once work has finished and the wind farm begins operating, as will be the case in the established wind farms you saw.
There are no restrictions on yachts sailing through wind farms and you should be able
Ato do so safely, the usual considerations of depth and conditions not withstanding. Some wind farms will have exclusion zones around each turbine, such as the Greater Gabbard off Suffolk and the London Array off Kent, where you will need to keep 50m from the turbines, but as these are hundreds of metres apart it still leaves room to sail through.
You don’t need to worry about the blades striking your mast, as most wind farms have a minimum clearance of 22m at Highest Astronomical Tide. Most yacht masts are under 15m, leaving plenty of space.
It is worth checking Local Notices to Mariners, published through the UKHO, the Coastguard, or on the websites for each of the wind farms, as these will tell you if maintenance is being carried out or if temporary exclusion zones are in place. Not all turbines are lit around their base, though they do have radar reflectors, but it could be tricky to thread your way through them at night or in fog. Lit buoys around the outside should give you plenty of warning. Keeping your charts up to date is also important, as wind farms can be built quickly and even charts that are just a year or two old may not show a new wind farm.