On Monday I found an unexpected weather window. If I were to leave Monday night and then go as far as possible until the weather turned to shit again sometime Wednesday afternoon. I was hoping to get as far as Brighton but Dover would be a possibility, too.
I was particularly anxious about crossing the Thames estuary behind the TSS and I had a time window where I would need to be at the mouth of the river Blackwater at a certain time to cross the estuary with the tide (or most of it anyway) in my favour. That meant leaving Lowestoft against the tide but at least with the wind from behind. Because of the wind over tide situation there was a very nasty wave but we gut used to it and were barreling along with a poled out genoa with 5 sometimes 6 knots through the water. Unfortunately with the tide against us we were only doing 3 to 3.5 over the ground. But we made it to the Blackwater in time around 3 a.m.
Crossing the estuary was incredibly slow. The wind had weakened and for some reason we still had the current against us. At some point near Cape North Foreland the wind died completely and on came the engine. From there it was 15 miles to Dover. The sun had come out and was now gone. I had hoped to take a picture of the white cliffs in the sun. Now it was raining so hard I couldn’t even see the them. Fortunately I did get my picture. In the rain but the cliffs are there no doubt about it.
I had now been up around 32 hours (counting the day in Lowestoft) and beginning to get very tired. I had gotten no sleep at all because I hadn’t dared to go below while in the Thames estuary and near Dover.
Crossing the two harbour entrances of Dover (with ferries and big ships constantly going in and out) took forever. You guessed it… we had the tide against us again.
The wind picked up and soon we had force 5 gusting 6 right on our nose and motoring didn’t work. So up came the sail and we started tacking our way into wind and tide. Or tried to at least….4 hours later there was Dover west entrance. I was extremely disheartened and felt like going into Dover and calling it a day. But I also really wanted to get further west. All the sailing boats were going in the other direction of course. Who can be so stupid as to try to go west in this weather? All of a sudden I made out a yacht that was motorsailing into the waves going into the same direction as I. For some reason that gave me some reassurance and I tried the same thing. And it worked. Slowly and rough with the boat slamming into the waves but we were making progress. When the tide finally turned in the middle of the next night the current was much weaker than the one against us and the period was also shorter. I don’t know why that is but it felt incredibly unfair.
At sunrise we were next to Beachy Head and only had 15 more miles to go to Brighton. There was no wind and the tide was against us of course but the spirits were high.
Via the VHF the harbourmaster had given me a spot in this huge marina and it took me a bit to find it. There was absolutely no wind and the sun was shining and I totally messed up the mooring manoeuvre. But nothing and nobody got hurt. It was only embarrassing and fortunately nobody looked (I think).
I went into the place backwards so I wouldn’t have trouble going out when there was more wind. That way I had the weather from behind which turned out to be a very bad decision as I was to learn later.
But now I was in the best of moods. Took a shower. Went to sleep for a few hours and then took the long walk into Brighton and enjoyed some Belgian fries. Went home and slept more.
There was torrential rain over night and lots of wind too. I slept through all of it. The next morning I went aft to make coffee. I didn’t look down but noticed that I had wet feet and that I was actually standing in water. The rain had apparently been so bad that it had come through the closed hatch which doesn’t totally close but I never had problems before. Everything was wet and all the wood on the floor was soaked. It was extremely frustrating. I couldn’t even sit down because the bunks were wet, too. So was the stove and it was still raining outside….
