Calliope was lowered into the water in February this year at Caversham, so beganing a wonderful spring and summer getting to know the boat and the River Thames, with the the long term plan of wintering in Portsmouth harbour before sailing over to France the following spring.
It’s good to have a plan; without one there is nothing that could possibly go wrong.
The commitment was made with a deposit to Haslar Marina for a 6 month berth from the 1st October, and the homework began by inviting an old school friend of Lesley’s up to the boat for a weekend with her husband Ray, who conveniently had an RYA Ocean Yachtmaster’s ticket that would be recognised by our insurance company as pilot for the trip.
They also stipulated that the weather be no more than actual or predicted Force 4 . . . . .
As the summer progressed we realised that we were becoming addicts of the long term weather forecast, though there looked to be an ideal window the weekend after the Piper Henley bash, starting off with a good tide down to Gravesend on the Thursday to pick up our pilot. Game on!
Having been down to Limehouse earlier in the year the tidal Thames held no surprises as we whizzed along at 10 knots past (and under) all the historic masonry, though as the river became an estuary the scenery was swallowed by increasingly distant mud flats; by the time we reached Gravesend you kind of had an understanding of how the town got its name. The poor ocean traveller arriving at the London Cruise Terminal opposite must wonder what on earth they had booked.
Pilot and wife duly arrived with flares, charts and extra red wine (just in case) and, with the weather promising Force 2-3 for the next couple of days, we confirmed our bookings with Ramsgate, Eastbourne and Brighton marinas for the next three nights. Fish and chip supper with red wine, mmmm, good.
We slipped our ropes the following morning at 0800 hours so that, by Ray’s calculation, we would round North Foreland in time for a favourable tide flow around and down to Ramsgate. The meeting of the Thames, the North Sea and the Channel can apparently ‘get a little lumpy’ if you get it wrong he mentioned, and having found out later that his idea of flat calm was a 6 foot swell I am very pleased to report that he got it right.
We made good time to Ramsgate arriving at1500 hours, though Ray was anxious to – actually, Ray doesn’t get anxious, it was more of an ‘ideally we should’ – set off early the following morning to get the best out of the tide flows again, this time past Dover and round Dungeness. Shepherds Pie supper, red wine, good.
So, we left Ramsgate at first light – 0650 hours – and out into the sea proper to follow the inner channel down between the Goodwin Sands and Deal. It’s funny the things you find out by way of idle conversation over the hours standing in a wheelhouse next to someone. Things like it is the first time Ray has ever taken this course – he usually goes around the outside of the Sands in his big keel yachts, but he thought it would be fine to go through Wallow Alley in a flat bottom barge.
Wallow Alley apparently is what his lot call the run of unpredictable waves that form as the sea gets funnelled between the land and the Sands. Thanks Ray, I’ll just go out on the back deck to watch the flat calm 6 foot swell for a bit. The fact that he also explained out that we were at that point closer to France than Eastbourne didn’t help much either.
Meantime the good ship was loving it and we were ahead of schedule again, though a slight worry appeared on the horizon when the lunchtime shipping forecast for next day mentioned the dreaded words ‘occasionally 5 later’ around Selsey Bill. With this in mind, a couple of phone calls later and we were on a different tack to Beachy Head, missing out the night in Eastbourne and going straight to Brighton. We arrived at 1845 hours with the navigation lights on; very pretty., lamb stew, red wine, fair to middling, good later.
We were all up at first light again on Sunday morning looking at inshore shipping forecasts. The Met office were saying Force 3 to 4, 5 later; WeatherPro didn’t mention the 5 though they both agreed that we could look forward to 6’s and 7’s for the rest of the week. We decided to go with WeatherPro and pushed off at 0830 hours.
Now I accidentally lived in Selsey in the late seventies and I remember it as a bit of a flat and desolate place, unlike when I now discover the raging sea all around it. We were up, down and sidey-ways all at the same time for a very long half hour, with the boat taking it all in her stride and me with eyes fixed firmly on the distant Spinnaker Tower of Portsmouth and the calmer waters of the Solent.
So, we got here. 1500 hours on the last sunny weekend of the year probably, and our new home for the winter and it’s all good; very very good.
