Stargazer pauses, overnight, in her dash up Channel, to beat the incoming gale. Allowing her skipper to sleep, and the tide to turn in her favour. Before setting out into Saturday’s pyrotechnic dawn.
On Friday morning, we had hoisted the cruising chute, off Eastbourne. By the glow of Stargazer’s navigation lights. Broad reaching past a sparkling, but yet to awaken, Hastings.
We watch silently as the sun rises. Feel it’s warming glow chase away the night chill. Dry the pearls of dew from the decks.
Paint the sandstone bluff a dreamy gauzy gold.
As the heat of the day builds, the wind veers. Stargazer beats gently toward Dungeness. Riding the inshore eddy, which presages the turn of the Channel tide. The brutally square silhouettes, of its nuclear reactors, our day mark.
Off the tip, of the tawny gravel spit, the east going tide gathers Stargazer in its arms. Sweeping her along the rhumb line.
Accelerating the apparent wind.
Stargazer gathers pace, as the tide quickens further, off Folkestone.
By the time I radio Dover Port Control, for permission to cross the ferry entrance, Stargazer is making seven knots over the ground. The incoming Pride of France, warned of our presence, is happy to cross astern. Leaving our wind clear, from its turbulent shadow.
The breeze is building. The tide at its peak flow. As Stargazer rounds the South Foreland.
We are finally able to bear off, by ten or fifteen degrees. Onto a flying fetch. Making between eight and nine knots over the ground. A glint of rooftops now visible on the horizon.
Stargazer skims through the familiar Ramsgate pier heads. To tuck in, beneath the high granite walls, for the night. The forecasters still in disagreement about the timing, but not the imminence, of a change in the weather.
Saturday morning dawns fiery and fair. A light easterly ruffles the sea. With the certainty of a favourable tide awaiting us, off the North Foreland. There is the possibility, of a romping twelve to seventeen knots of fair breeze, forecast for tomorrow. But, doubts remain amongst the forecasters: this may turn out to be a strong westerly headwind. To my eyes, the dawn sky has a look of mischief about it.
Stargazer hugs the shallows. Staying out of the strongest of the south going tide.
As she works her way up to the North Foreland. There to greet the first of the flood, into the London River.
Stargazer turns her bows due west. In the lightest of airs. Riding the tide. Helped along by the engine and its ailing water pump.
Until we sight the Medway channel. Where a tug waits to shepherd an arriving merchantman. The afternoon sea breeze playfully rippling the waters around her.
Stargazer glides past the quays of Thamesport, saluted by its cranes; and on up river.
Carrying the last of the flood. The wooded banks rising around her. Home before the weather hits.
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