Here Comes the Sun

A rainbow arcs across Ramsgate Harbour. The spring sun splashes a bright patch of summer blue across the canvas of bleak black winter cloud. The tide is fair, the wind murmurs on the sea wall beside us. It is time to make sail.

Stargazer scuds north, reaching under double reefed main in 25 knots of NW breeze. She carves a boiling white wake across a rhythmically undulating blue green sea.

Mischievous gusts spill down from the high white cliffs above. Our wake squirms sinuously as we duck and weave, playing the shifts 

The waves flatten as we round North Foreland and sniff out the first of the flood tide, to carry us into the London River. Stargazer is hard on the wind now. Casting to port and starboard, scenting out the deepest water, as she tacks. Through the shipping, waiting for orders, at anchor in Margate roadsted; into the Gore Channel, the Copperas Channel, the Horse Channel and the Four Fathom Channel.  

The wind frees as Stargazer slips into the Medway and glides upriver, making the most of slack water in the river. The spring sun quietly retires below the horizon, its work done for the day. Behind, it leaves a sky purged of cloud and the anticipation of a summer's cruising under sail.

BRASS MONKEY WEATHER

The March winds, whistling icily from the arctic, mound Stargazer's decks with snow. It is a month until her eight birthday which, this year, falls on Easter Sunday. A double celebration to commemorate with our first sail of a new season.

But first there is work to do. In the window, between the two March falls of snow, Stargazer is lifted. Temperatures rise just far enough for the anti fouling to dry. Anodes are replaced, topsides polished, the engine serviced and the source of a mysterious leak (eventually) traced to the calorifier.

Rain lashes the deck as I sit snug below on Good Friday, with the refit complete. 

We sail the following morning. The traffic roar and bustle of the upper river falls away as Stargazer spreads her wings and gybes seaward in long boards. Her familiar tiller comes alive in my hand. The silvery song of our wake and the primal chatter of the marsh birds fill my ears.  The metronome of time slows.

We drop anchor in Sharfleet creek. Around us the marshes rise, to provide shelter for the night, as six metres of spring tide ebbs into the North Sea.

A pair of White Fronted Geese, in from the Greenland tundra, patrol the chill foreshore beside us.

We reach gently out of the Medway on a steely grey Easter morning, making for the North Foreland - a fitting celebration of the day on which Stargazer was first launched eight years ago.

 I am wearing two fleeces and a body warmer under my full waterproofs; plus a windproof hat, with earflaps, on top of my balaclava. A warming mug of coffee or soup is seldom far from my, mittened, hand.

We take the 'overland route' close in to the Kentish shore, slipping over the shoals, threading through the ancient Four Fathom and Copperas channels. I break out an easter egg as the twin Reculver Towers come abeam and we clear the shallowest part of our route.

From the Foreland we romp south, Stargazer lifting to the Channel swell. Ahead of us the welcoming breakwaters of Ramsgate Harbour.

We have our pick of berths. I make fast, connect to shore power and fire up the heater!