Up Channel 4

 

Stargazer scuds east. Over a heaped indigo sea. The moon just set. The hiss of her bow wave, and the spatter of spray sweeping the deck, the only sounds. Save for the swish of the waves and the song of the wind.

The orange glow, on the horizon, pinkens and then yellows ; the night-blue, of water and sky lighten. Definition and detail sharpen around us. As the sun peers, above the world's rim.

Stargazer gleefully throws rose tinted showers of spray skyward. Away to leeward, the sandstone bluff, beneath which Hastings nestles. A static silhouette, sandwiched between chimeral sea and sky.

Long shadows flick across its weather-riven face, to congregate in the woodland of its hanging valley. 

With one final defiant headland, the land falls away. To the low gravel shores of Rye Bay.

The distant Dungeness power station and its lines of pylons, marching inland, the only features visible, above the undulating wave caps.

Two tides meet. Seas boil and break. The wind picks up to twenty two knots. Dungeness is a desolate uneasy spot. Even on a sunny autumn day.

Stargazer shoulders her way through the confusion. Riding the rapidly flowing spring tide. Bearing off for Dover, and the lee of Dungeness spit, as soon as she is able.

The waters soon calm, as Stargazer streaks by Folkestone. Making seven knots over the ground.

Bart helms. Whilst I brew coffee and eat 'doorstep' peanut butter sandwiches, in the companionway. Watching a Royal Navy frigate, holding station. Always in the eye of the sun, always exactly bow on to Stargazer. Until it steams off west. Seemingly satisfied.

I radio Dover Port Control, for permission to cross their twin entrances. As the ferries bustle to and fro beneath the castle, atop Vera Lynn's white cliffs.

On, to South Foreland, Stargazer sweeps. Tight in beneath the sheer chalk face. Making for the Gull stream (channel through the Goodwin Sands). On a dead run. The wind, both true and apparent, dropping. Three knots of tide sustaining our speed.

Stargazer arrives in Ramsgate, in time to take afternoon tea. Eaten in shorts and polo shirt, under Indian Summer conditions. With my old friend, Roger. Stargazer in her favourite spot, beneath the round granite lighthouse.