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| Masses of space in Ramsgate |
The WOA Kent group had originally planned to rendezvous at Queenborough, spend the next night in Ramsgate and then press on to Calais. That suited me, as I didn't want to do a long North Sea crossing as my first passage with Janet, who has also developed a painful arthritic hip in the past few weeks. Then the Kent group had a change of plan and decided to press straight over from Queenborough to Calais on the 30th. The tides never work very well from Harwich to Calais anyway, plus we were already due to leave SYH at 4am on the 30th and I really didn't want to go any earlier, so I decided to stick with plan A. It seemed like a good decision. We had a pleasant sail down across Little Sunk, motored down the King's Channel and across the Black Deep, and then sailed from Foulger's Gat to North Foreland. Ramsgate marina had been very unsure if they would have space for five boats but in fact a race had left a day earlier and when we got in at 1225 there was acres of space.
Meanwhile, as we discovered later, the rest of the fleet had a somewhat unpleasant Channel crossing, with winds well over 20kt, rough seas and general unwellness. We never saw more than 15kt winds and had a lovely sail.
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| East Goodwin lightvessel after the fog cleared |
The next day had been forecast as virtually windless, and as we left at 0900 there were also reports of patches of very thick fog. We headed outside the Goodwins and fortunately only saw one really dense patch, just north f the East Goodwin lightvessel. Then it cleared and we crossed the deep water channels with no real problems, although we were called by a tanker asking us to pass astern of it - which I'm pretty sure we would have done anyway. We saw mostly 10-12kt southerlies and sailed a good bit of the way. By 1510 French time we were on a buoy in the Arrière Port and by 1545 rafted to fellow Westerly Aeolus on the visitor pontoon. Anne, now a co-owner of Aeolus with Tom, is a long-standing friend of Janet and former co-owner of her Centaur, so that was all very satisfactory.
Then it was a hasty tidy, check-in, and beer on the pontoon, all while being deafened by the Festival of the Sea a few metres away. The most amazing thing was that Kalessin was still on the marina's system with Sam as skipper - we were last here in 2008. Then a walk to find the little Baladin bus to the port so that Janet could be checked in to Schengen and get her passport stamped. I still don't know if they actually needed to see me with my German passport, but I went along anyway. Back to the boat, quick change into posh clothes and out for the Little Ship dinner, which was delightful with good food, good company, reasonable wine flowing freely and a nice birthday card for me (69 today).
Calais had been very unhelpful about giving us electronic keys to get back in, assuring us that on return someone would have our boat names and let us in. Not so on the outer gate, where a rock concert was just finishing and the officious security guy wouldn't initially allow us in at all. Somehow we all got in eventually, the music stopped at midnight, and we could sleep until they started time trial racing on the opposite quay at 8am on Sunday.
We had a relaxed day in Calais and I walked to the beach, then through the town to the Carrefour to get some better instant coffee for Janet (she was drinking last year's which had set into a solid block), and looped around via the Canal de Calais to relive our approach in 2008. The less accessible banks of the canal and Bassin Carnot are still dotted with tents of asylum seekers, but they have rebuilt the bridge we squeezed under in 2008, with a new sluice-gate that we could not have passed.
SYH to Ramsgate: 44 miles; Ramsgate to Calais: 31 miles.
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| Illuminated by the lights from the rock concert |
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| Bridge from the Bassin Carnot to the Arriere Port |
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