Blue Water

Stargazer studies her reflection in translucent, turquoise-blue, waters.

Beneath the ramparts of Dover castle and its stiffly cracking union flag.

In the gated shelter of the Granville Dock.

This morning she beat out of The Swale over shoal, steel-blue, seas richly opaque with suspended estuarine alluvium.

The waters tumble and churn, as Stargazer rounds the North Foreland. White caps rear . Thames ebb meets the southbound Channel tide. One jostles and tussles with the other. The dispute is over which colour blue to don. A brief compromise is reached. For a mile or two the waters are opalescent. Changing as they catch the light: white, pale green, brown, a fleck of blue. Chimeral.

By the time we reach the North Foreland light, the matter is settled. The swells march to the even rhythm of the English Channel, wearing navy blue.

Stargazer romps south. Surfing on the swells. Broad reaching fast, under full jib and double reefed main, in eighteen to twenty four knots of breeze.

The sea flattens as we sweep down the Gull Stream, to shoreward of the Goodwin Sands. Past Deal . The glinting eyes, of its waterfront houses, peering over the tawny shingle foreshore . The sea's colour deepens, from navy to cobalt blue, as Stargazer sails through the historic Downs anchorage. Here, square rigged men-o'-war, and merchant-men, would wait for a break in the prevailing south westerlies. Wait for a northerly wind, like today's, to speed them down Chanel and into the open waters of the Atlantic.

Before us lie the white cliffs of Dover, the South Foreland. The port nestled behind its protecting bulk . Cloud dappled sunlight paints highlights, with bold brush stokes, across land and sea alike . The infinite blues of the sea are separated from the variegated greens of the land by a vivid slash of iridescent white . An ever changing canvas, viewed from within.