Monday, 12 August
First of all – Happy Birthday Frances! We hope you have a great day and come back to crew for us soon!
For those of you wondering – why didn’t you cross the channel at Calais? I have two answers: wind direction – it comes predominantly from the West so it’s hard to go straight into it. And, secondly, shipping lanes – these are full of enormous ships and you need to cross them at right angles, both for navigation regulations, and for your sanity!
So we thought about leaving from Boulogne, but they don’t stamp UK passports there (bloody Brexit!) and you’d have to go down the coast a bit anyway to get to a right angle attack on those shipping lanes.
So today we left the dock in Boulogne for Dieppe at 8.30 and what a gloriously sunny day it was!
Better than that, we had lovely un-forecasted wind from an easy beating direction. We started with a reef, shook it out for a bit, and put it back in again near the end. The sea was completely flat.
We enjoyed overtaking the other boats who left before us. Mostly we were cruising at 7-8 knots in 10-14 knots of wind.
The coastal cliffs are very pretty in the sunshine.
Just 2 miles before the end, Dieppe decided to give us a rather Ostend welcome!- but this time with only 20 knots of wind and a few white horses.
One rogue wave jumped straight out of the sea and splashed just me on the helm – I was soaked!
We were nevertheless glad to get into the welcoming arms of the harbour walls and were tied up by 5pm.
It’s a lovely marina right in the heart of the town – a bit like Weymouth.
As we have a whole day here tomorrow we relaxed and ate more fish.
We are very excited because Alex is joining us again tonight, and will cross the Channel with us.
We like Dieppe and look forward to seeing the sights tomorrow.
