Out of Lockdown 3

 

Ramsgate harbour mouth opens before us. Spring sunshine plays across the waterfront within. Warm and inviting. Stout stone walls still the chill breeze. Stargazer slips into their embrace.

We had a rousing beat out of the Medway and down along the north Kent shore. Twenty knots of north east wind drove Stargazer, double reefed, through the shoal waters of first the Four Fathoms Channel and then the Copperas Channel.

Past Margate Hook and on into the Gore Channel. The water deeper and bluer now. Our bows dipping to sea swells marching in from the English Channel . Misted spray blowing aft along the heeled deck, as we round North Foreland.

South we swoop, to Ramsgate. Sheets eased now. The conductor has slowed the tempo. Gone are the dashing crescendos of our day long beat. Replaced by a swelling joyous chorus. Wind and tide lifting us along in the afternoon sun.

Out of Lockdown 2

 A black squall cloud and a splash of sunshine banish the morning sea fog and herald the arrival of twenty five knots of north easterly breeze . I awoke to the mournful lowing of ships out in the London River. Basso profundo fog horns reverberating eerily in the opaque stillness of  dawn.

This morning the forecasts are all in agreement. The wind will blow hard. Now, up on the sea wall, beyond the sheltering ramparts of the creek, the wind turbines have begun to turn - gathering momentum as the breeze builds.

For once, Stargazer's sprayhood is up. Sheltering me as I sit in the cockpit, savouring the roar of the wind and the lap of the water. Reacquainting myself with the unique sensations of being afloat. That sense of freedom to wander, to linger or to simply be.  

Out of Lockdown

 

Long legged avocet line the shore of the creek. Their bold, black barred, plumage aglow in the afternoon sun. Their shrill yelping cries mingling with the waves of birdsong, which wash over the mudflats like a balm to the soul.

One wades into the shallows. Sifting the heady salt marsh admixture of water and silt for sustenance. Upturned beak casting from side to side.

A godwit, in rufous summer plumage already, ambles down to join the avocet. Peering doubtfully into the tea brown waters.

Stargazer is anchored in Godwit creek. 'Our' spot in Sharfleet creek. Well sheltered to the north and the east. Tomorrow's forecast is equivocal - depending on the weather site consulted. We will either have a fine eighteen knot passage making breeze or a stiff twenty seven knots. In either case from the north east. If the latter, we'll stay put in our sheltered bay. If the former, we will make for Ramsgate on the morning tide.

For now, we are recharging our batteries, in the still of the creek . Stargazer, literally, with her solar panels deployed. Myself, figuratively, drinking in the chorus of birdsong, the avian antics and the open horizons which surround us. Relishing the release from lockdown.

This morning we locked out of the marina and stole downriver. Riding the ebb, past Upnor village. Shafts of sunlight periodically piercing swirling banks of sea fog.

We beat downriver in a zephyr of easterly breeze. Wind and sun strengthening as we sail.

We slip into the familiar mouth of 'our' creek at low water. The first of the flood helping us in, as the sun boils off the last whisps of the mist. Eager to begin a new season of adventure.

A Fair Portent

 

Stargazer's topsides gleam once more. Crisp spring days, in the week after Easter, have enabled rapid progress with her scraping, polishing and antifouling.

The days are noticeably longer now. The sun warmer - where shelter can be found from the keen wind. One by one gaunt grey, winter bare, trees are reborn luxuriant and green .

On the eve of Stargazer's relaunch, she basks in the last rays of the setting sun. Eager to re enter the water - to begin a new sailing season.

On the morning of our launch, the seal is at play off the crane dock.

Gamboling, in aquatic back somersaults, jaws agape. A lithe master of the subsurface world, here to welcome us home.

We cast off. With a final forward roll, the seal dives.

Stargazer follows her newfound friend out of the dock and back to the berth. The breeze eases to a mirror calm. Perfect weather in which to bend the sails on. A fair portent for a new season. 

Below the Surface

 

A bewhiskered snout silently surfaces and scents the air. Curious eyes study me. . . .

. . . . from the still surface of the sun trap dock.

The seal swims over for a closer look. Now confident to reveal the full length of his body above the water.

Then, wary once more, he takes a last deep resonant breath and stealthily slips below the surface. There to hunt the marina mullet.

Stargazer is still up on the hard - even though we had originally planned to relaunch last week. Three weeks of chill and changeable weather have slowed progress with the usual annual spring refit program. On top of that, it became clear, once she was lifted, that the ravages of time had caught up with her, unseen and unsuspected, below the surface of the sea.

Over the past ten seasons Stargazer's antifouling paint has built up and started to crumble, leaving an uneven, drag inducing surface. This year, before we can apply fresh antifouling we must first sand and scrape her hull smooth below the waterline. With a run of warm spring days this week, Stargazer's port side is making good progress.

Each year, as soon as we are out of the water, I check the rudder. I hold the bottom edge of the blade and throw my weight back against it. This time there was movement. Only a millimetre or two - but too much for such a highly loaded, critical component. The Hallberg-Rassy yard in Sweden have sourced and shipped me replacement rudder bearings. Today, heart in mouth, I dropped the rudder to fit them.

Helping hands emerged from around the yard to manoeuvre the substantial rudder and shaft back up through the new bearings and into the boat.

Pleased with progress, I relax in the cockpit. Allowing the Easter sunshine to unknot my tensions - built up ahead of tackling the rudder removal. Relishing the end of the stay-at-home lockdown law. Savouring the start of a new season. 

From my vantage point, I gaze out over the river. On the banks, the trees are beginning to bud. On the water, boats are on the move.

Stirrings

 

Stargazer's familiar tiller comes to life beneath my hand; lifts my heart. I feel her rudder bite as she gathers momentum, leaving the berth. A short burst of ahead, with the tiller hard to port, checks the stern way and brings her head round. We motor through the marina and down between the dressed granite walls of the old naval dry dock . I swing Stargazer through one hundred and eighty degrees (Wayne-the Crane is set up to lift boats port side to, head out) and slot into a space on the lifting pontoon. Ahead of us lies 'Walrus,' a 2001 Rassy 39. Inbound from points south, at the end of last season, we threaded the shoals of the Copperas Channel together. 

I return home across the park, pocketing my woolly hat in the warming sunshine. Treading warily around the bright bold crocuses, which peer up at me through the grass. Spring is astir. My spirits are high. Feeling Stargazer afloat and in motion; going through the familiar routines of rigging up, casting off and docking has stirred deep emotions. Re-awoken my desire to cruise, from its lockdown lengthened hibernation.

What cruising opportunities will 2021 bring? I wonder as I walk . Local day sailing is permitted, even now, as 'daily exercise.' From the twelfth of April the right to overnight stays and travel, at least within the borders of England, is reinstated. On May the seventeenth a review of the cross border travel ban is to be held. Progress on vaccination will be the key to developments there, I reflect ."I wonder when my turn, to be vaccinated, will come?" The answer arrives as I open the front door. An invitation to book my COVID jabs lies before me on the mat.

A joyous excitement mounts within in me. I reach for calendar, tide tables and almanac - and begin to sketch the outline of a cruising plan for 2021.

Stargazer and I will complete our spring refits together, before Easter. Her in the form of engine maintenance, fresh anodes, antifouling (we're trying Shogun 033 this year, after some speed sapping growth during last year's cruise) and perhaps precautionary new rudder bearings; myself in the form of my first inoculation. The tides turn fair on April the twentieth, for a Suffolk Rivers shakedown cruise, returning in late May. Returning in time for my second shot and any work required aboard Stargazer.

Then we will be free to head out on our main cruise, at the end of May. French or Irish borders could be open by then. In any event the West Country beckons. If French ports are open to us, the post-Brexit entry formalities and ninety day maximum stay rule, make Dartmouth to Roscoff look an attractive opening gambit. Picking up where we left off in the corona curtailed season of 2020. If France is any or all of: forbidden by the UK government, closed by the French government, poorly vaccinated, in dispute with the UK over proof of vaccination - Ireland may be more accessible, because longer standing (than the EU) treaties govern our relations with the Emerald Isle; and a cruise via Scilly may be possible....

My cruising juices are stirring. My mind revitalised, juggling pleasurable possibilities for the season in prospect.

Snow Bound

 

Snow muffles the sounds of a crisp February day. The low winter sun paints long shadows on its clean white canvas. Thawing tawny branches. Warming my back, as I take my daily lockdown walk.

My boots scrunch on the loose powder beneath them. They leave a straggle of compacted imprints, from their cleated soles, as I pick my way across the shifting surface. The sensation evokes thoughts of clambering ashore barefoot, from the dinghy, across the soft sands of warm summer shores.

Before me, wind and sun have cleared the white cloak from the battlements of Upnor Castle. The pale brick inlaid injunction, for 'No Vessel to Anchor,' stands out clear against the ruddy London Brick of the sea wall. Marking the spot where the gunpowder magasine stood in Nelson's day.

Amid the oak wood, to seaward of the castle, the snow lies deep. Racing dinghies hibernate. Their winter-hardy crews confined to their homes by Social Distancing and travel restriction requirements -  as human kind's battle, against its hidden virus foe, enters a second year.

Boats lie untended on their moorings. . . .

. . . . or on the hard. Paid fleeting visits by owners out on daily exercise - or not visited atall. The annual spring rites, of preparation for the season ahead, suspended. 

Tantalising hopes of a 'Great British Summer' (with its tacit acknowledgement that routine cross border travel is unlikely in 2021 - and conceivably beyond) are thrown out by Government Ministers. Then contradicted. In truth, nobody knows when we will be able to turn the tide on the virus - or what sacrifices may be necessary to do so.

Beneath the snowy hillside, black hulled lighters lie moored patiently, jostled by the making tide. Wavelets chiming like gong strokes on their empty steel sides.

A diminutive tug plucks one from its mooring. Easing its flat beveled bow out into the tide and letting the current do the work of carrying it out into the channel.

The leisure craft look on. Wondering what the future holds. Snow bound.