Stargazer sweeps out of Sharfleet Creek, her ensign crackling in the breeze. There's a passage-making South Westerly force 5 on her quarter. A warm autumn sun is climbing into the clear blue morning sky.
A rufous feathered Godwit forages intently for breakfast, on the spit, as we forge past.
Down towards the Foreland we romp, wind and tide urging us on. We round the familiar chalk headland and harden our sheets, skimming close inshore.The sun sinks towards the horizon, casting long equinoctial afternoon shadows across the cliffs and coves of Broadstairs.
We wait for our Channel crossing tide in Ramsgate.
As dawn breaks, we are in the shipping lanes, riding the tide south to the West Ruytingen cardinal (off Calais). We arrive as the tide turns.
It sweeps us majestically up the French coast, with the wind now on our beam. Stargazer foams past Dunkerque.
The scantily clad mermaid, off the harbour entrance, demurely turns her back to us. Fortunate for Stargazer and I - for it is bad luck to look a mermaid in the eye!
We thread the Zuydcoote Passe, over the sandbanks, and into Belgian waters. Nieuwpoort's welcoming whitewashed breakwaters reach out towards us, just as our twelve hours of fair tide begins to run out.
We make fast in a tranquil corner at the top of the harbour. Birdsong fills the air: the bubbling call of a curlew; the insistent shrieks of a giant skua; and the piercing staccato of sanderling on the wing.
A seal pup looks up in surprise at this new visitor to his realm.
The curlew strides forward purposefully, trilling its haunting melody.
I sit in Stargazer's cockpit, drinking a post passage pot of coffee, watching the sun set. A sleek black head gently surfaces astern. Two limpid eyes meet mine. This meeting of eyes feels like a good luck charm.
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