30th August – Tuesday
We slept quite well, but woke early and were both up drinking tea well before our alarms went off at 7 o’clock. While Carole made the beds and wiped the condensation off the insides of the windows (it had been cold and damp overnight), Chris checked to see if there had been any change to the weather forecast for the day ahead. There had not, although we could hear the sound of a fog horn coming from outside the harbour. We went up and showered and had a light breakfast before getting ready to leave Ramsgate. Chris had spoken to one of the marina berthing officers and he said that a large car transporter ship was due in at 8.30 am. At about 8.45 Chris radioed in to the Port Control to get an update on both the ship’s arrival and visibility outside the harbour. The ship was slightly delayed owing to the fact that visibility was down to about 300 metres, which wasn’t good news. However, shortly after, another yacht who had departed some time before, radioed in to say that visibility was improving on his journey northwards from Ramsgate. So we were happy to leave, too, once the large ship was safely tied up in the commercial side of the port.
Just before 9.30 then, we slipped our lines. The visibility had now reduced to 50 metres so we cautiously nosed our way out of port with Carole putting away the fenders while keeping a close eye out for other vessels. We could not see the outer piers so Chris followed our track from yesterday, then set our course north. Within half an hour or so, the sun had burned off most of the fog ahead of us although behind us visibility was still poor. Chris was keeping occupied watching out for the numerous large ships in our vicinity. The chart plotter is excellent for keeping a track on what is around and with all large ships having to have AIS (the technology to transmit and receive signals of theirs and others identification) information is available on the who, what, where, etc of each vessel. It’s quite easy then to see what one particular vessel is, where it is going and what speed it is doing and to make sure you don’t bump into it.
The weather was now an almost cloudless blue sky with hardly any wind. A Force 2 is no good for sailing so we were chugging along under engine.
We had two other yachts going our way with one, Dabtoe, having AIS transmission. The other yacht did not so we could not monitor his passage. Dabtoe was about 2.5 miles ahead and took the Foulers Gat route through the wind farm. We took Fishermans Gat so we did not have to go through the wind farm. Although it was not a race, we were seeing who made the best progress. The answer was almost nothing in it but we still won!
We were making really good time, so Chris did some calculations and decided to modify our course a little, diverting to a route via the Medusa and Stone Point buoys into Harwich/Felixstowe. Our ETA now into Ipswich was around 5.30 pm depending on what speed we manage to maintain.
As we approached the River Orwell we had a VHF call from our friend, Peter, who has a new boat called TAWA berthed at Shotley Marina. Peter was monitoring our departure from Ramsgate and he arranged to meet us when we arrived back on our home berth. The passage up the Orwell was very good with a nice warm light breeze and for half an hour or so we made way under sail alone. However, we were keen to get back home, so we turned the engine on to assist our progress and just before the bridge we brought both sails in. Soon we were in a very chaotic lock-in as some of the boats had not moved up properly, but we didn’t really care as we were almost home. Once through the lock we spotted Peter on our berth, but on this occasion his assistance was not needed as we moored up like we knew what we were doing. Oh yes, we had certainly had a good trip away, but oh boy, it was good to come home!
Thank you to all who have been reading our 2016 Blog. We hope you have enjoyed keeping up with our travels.
We have returned