– And we’re off! (Again)
Ramsgate 2015
After a surprisingly acceptable night’s sleep, we were up just before the alarm beeped at 6 am and one of us had a nice hot shower before the first cuppa of the day. We slipped our lines, as planned, at 7 am and after a quick lock-out, headed down the River Orwell to begin our passage to Ramsgate. We were optimistic that the gentle breeze would increase later and so were happy to motor. We had beautiful sunshine, with the thermometer fast climbing towards 20 degrees.
We passed Felixstowe’s cranes and the thumping of the piling hammer and proceeded to sail, although the wind speed hadn’t increased much. With the engine off, our speed decreased to under 2 knots, so we had to switch the engine back on to enable us to keep to our passage plan. At least it wasn’t raining.
Suddenly we heard a thud under the boat and a few moments later a lobster pot marker bobbed up. This then floated off as luckily our rope cutter had done its job and sliced the rope. You have to keep a sharp look-out when sailing as this can be a bit of a problem around our coasts.
We decided not to take the route through Foulgers Gat as we did not fancy the idea of sailing through the London Array Wind Farm so Fishermans Gat was the better choice. The wind had picked up enough for us to carry on under sail making a steady 5.5 – 6 kts. The sun was still shining and the sky was blue as we were approaching North Foreland. Soon we would be at our waypoint for the number 3 buoy to start our turn into Ramsgate. Carole started to prepare the ropes and fenders just at the time the sea started to get a bit bouncy. This is not a very pleasant job when being tossed about. Chris then called Ramsgate Port Control for permission to enter. Once in the outer harbour everything calmed down and soon we were tied up in our berth for the night.