A Feisty Final Furlong

Last alliteration of the blog, you’ll be pleased to hear, and also getting towards the last post. But not yet – and it may feel like the Final Furlong but it’s not over yet. No champagne, no tears, a couple of days to go. And I am adamant that there are to be no congratulations of any kind until I am tied up at Itchenor Sailing Club on Saturday. I am petrified that I will jinx myself and end up sinking on the way into Chichester Harbour. But I am nearly there – in Littlehampton – and the forecast for tomorrow is less than ten knots, so I have to admit that it would take a spectacular piece of stupidity or self-sabotage to fail now, but I have a couple of candidates left. I was also expecting to feel a bit heroic sailing back through familiar waters having come not just from Kent but all the way around the whole country, but as you’ll see I didn’t at all.

Being gale-bound in either the Medway or Dover Harbour seemed like two very real possibilities earlier in the week. I had rashly told the assembled crowd at the Medway Yacht Club that since the wind was going into the North on Monday I was fairly sure I’d make it home. I was so confident that I went home on Saturday night, went to a football match on Sunday instead of sailing anywhere, and came back afterwards ready for an early departure for Ramsgate or Dover on Monday morning. Idly looking at the weather forecast on the train, ready to pat myself on the back for such impeccable planning, I had a nasty shock: the wind had gone round into the North, but it had also decided to blow really hard on Monday – just in Kent, nowhere else. Disaster! Northerly gusts of 35 knots when you’re sailing through treacherous sandbanks on a north-facing coast sounded like a great way to sabotage the whole trip at the last minute, but not to worry, I had left a day or two in hand. I would go down the River Swale and anchor off Harty Ferry at the far end, staying in shelter and getting myself a few hours closer to Dover so I could crack on when the wind dropped on Tuesday.

This contingency plan had its upside too: I had never sailed through The Swale, which is not in fact a river at all but the bit of water that separates Sheppey from the rest of Kent. Thank goodness it does. It also meant that I could go through the Kingsferry Bridge, an ‘iconic’ (if you can use the word to describe such a hideous structure) 1950’s lifting bridge that used to carry the only road and railway line to Sheppey. Growing up I could see its towers from my bedroom window. The road now goes over a new, tall, fixed bridge but the old one still carries the railway and a few cars and lorries local enough or confused enough to miss the main bridge, and you can call it up and demand to be let through as long as there isn’t a train coming. Apparently this is easier done since they replaced the machinery last year: until then they were restricted to only lifting the bridge when there wasn’t a train on the island in case it jammed and the train was stuck there.

Annoyingly the wind was more north-east than north so my smug assertion that I would get back to Itchenor without tacking evaporated after half an hour as I found myself tacking down the same bit of river we had been tacking up in the big south-westerly on Saturday, but this time without Chris and David to pull the sheets in for me. Past Queenborough I was into the unknown – and a different world as The Swale is deep but very narrow at this point, little more than a creek, which is probably why they put the bridge there. Even the new machinery still runs to a schedule, and the bridge-keepers made me wait around for 20 minutes in the building breeze before the weird experience began: there was a yacht waiting the other side and they called us both to get ready. I did, and started heading slowly towards the bridge which began to open so slowly I missed it starting. If you have nothing better to do for the next two minutes you can enjoy a real-time bridge opening:

Perhaps this will start a trend of mindful bridge-opening videos like those log fires from Norway that were all the rage a few years back

Readers with a more hectic schedule might prefer the rather briefer ‘through the surprisingly small bridge’ video:

I imagine the bridge isn’t actually made of wood: those sides were probably put there as ships bashed into them trying to squeeze through

This whole palaver must have really annoyed the locals who, unlike the yachts, then had to sit in their cars for another five minutes while the bridge came down even slower than it went up.

The Swale was bleaker than I expected – nothing to see but wide marshland on either side, the brief excitement of the old paper works and some industrial buildings around Sittingbourne and then really nothing at all as the towns and villages like Faversham, Conyer and Oare are all far off across the marshes. Even the high security prisons that Sheppey is so famous for were invisible behind mud and grass, and this was High Water. It also began to blow very hard, even behind the island, so I was glad I hadn’t tried to get to Dover, but it was suprisingly rough in the supposedly sheltered Swale as well, so when I saw a line of moorings I thought I’d take the pilot book’s recommendation and pick one up for the night. This was a challenge in such wind and tide, and took about five minutes of missing and swearing, so I was very embarassed when I had finally hooked it and sat down to find, first of all, that there was a man on the very small and very old wooden yacht next door watching me and, second, that I had somehow not shackled the main halyard onto the boom and it was now waving around in the strong breeze. It took me half an hour of sweating and swearing waving two boathooks tied together with a teaspoon taped to the end to catch the thing, all with an audience. I had sailed most of the way around the UK and never done anything that stupid.

Once the show was over my neighbour climbed into his dinghy and rowed over in the near-gale on his way ashore to go home. He was grizzled and weather-beaten and wearing a set of heritage oilskins that matched his boat, and made it all feel like it was 1960 and they had just finished building the bridge. I said I hoped it was all right to use the mooring, the pilot book had suggested a contribution to the local sailing club. “Oh no, these aren’t club moorings, they’re privately owned,” he said, “but you’re welcome to use it. Mind you, that one’s for a boat about a quarter the size of yours. But the worst that can happen is that it breaks and you end up on the mud. Isn’t it wonderful here?” he carried on, without a pause. “Absolutely deserted. Nothing at all.” He waved his hand at the windswept saltings and the muddy water churned into steep waves by the wind and tide, and I felt that he belonged to this different world. He interrogated me further about where I’d come from and where I was going, and it came out that I was finishing sailing round the UK. “Oh, I went around once,” he said, very nonchalantly, “marvellous, isn’t it? All those places you’ll never sail to again, but now I’m back home here.” He indicated the mud again, as if it was self-evidently better than, say, Skye. I asked what boat he’d done it in. “In Bonito, of course”, he said, indicating the 20 feet plus bowsprit of wooden boat history next door. He wished me a quiet night and rowed off towards the mud, probably to pack his oars into the back of a Morris Minor or possibly to walk across the marsh to Faversham station to catch the Southern Railway steam service home to light his pipe and polish his sextant.

Chastened by everything he’d said, and feeling not at all heroic in a rather comfortable 33-footer, I let go of the mooring and went and anchored off the mud flats. It was then that I had time to check the forecast for tomorrow: far from calming down, it was now going to be as windy as today, perhaps windier by lunchtime. Far from a quiet night I spent the evening poring over wind apps and tide tables, working out that if I got up at 0530 and left in the dark at 0600 I might at least be around the North Foreland, the top right corner of Kent, and heading south with the wind behind me when it came on to blow hard again. This was all a bit worrying, and meant I couldn’t really enjoy The Swale’s remoteness when the wind did finally begin to drop, even though it tried its hardest to look attractive.

There are times when getting up at 0530 is worthwhile, and this was one of them. I woke to a calm Swale, upped the anchor and motored out into a gathering breeze. By 0630 I was past Sheppey with one reef, by 0700 I was off Whiststable with a second reef and by 0730 I had put three rolls in the genoa too. I’d decided that it was too windy to risk going through what’s oh-so-amusingly called ‘The Overland Route’, a series of channels off Herne Bay and Margate where there would be less than a metre of water under the keel, and instead headed around the top of Margate Sand on the edge of the deeper water. Another advantage of the early start was a stronger tide with me but it was pushing into the wind and creating white water on all sides as the short, steep waves were driven by the brisk northerly wind onto the exposed sandbanks. Even with all the reefs it felt as if the boat was in the waves as much as on them, and I was very relieved to bear away at what felt like mid-afternoon, but turned out to be 1000, and head south at last with the wind and waves behind me, and plenty of tide too. I’d done all the steering into this big wind and was looking forward to a rest, but with these waves Raymond was being knocked about, so reluctantly I carried on as we flew past first the North Foreland and Ramsgate…

…then past Walmer and Deal to the South Foreland…

Now that’s what I call cliffs. Nothing like this since Flamborough Head.

…and on to Dover:

Unfortunately this all looks a bit jingoistic, but I just like the picture

I’d been into Dover before so the ferry-dodging wasn’t quite so terrifying, and the VTS operators, who must be the busiest in the country, seem to have a great sense of humour and sound like bingo callers. “Pride of Kent? Pier 2 and 3, twenty-three! Seaway Three, you’ll be on 5! Normandie, Madame, for you this afternoon we have number 8! Blue Moon, good afternoon, follow that ferry, you’re clear to the marina!” I needed this cheerfulness as the wind had just begun to deliver the promised 25 knots, it was now raining very hard and I was exhausted after steering for seven hours. It was only just 1300 though and I had escaped the worst of the wind.

I staggered up to the marina office where the welcoming local was persuading a Danish couple, dripping in full oilskins, to enjoy the pleasures of Dover High Street. “There’s a wide range of places to eat,” he said, I promise word for word: “Nando’s. Burger King. There’s a nice new M&S if you’d rather eat on board.” The Danes looked more confused than disappointed, and he turned to me. “Come far?” he asked. “Just round from The Swale“, I said, with what was meant to be false modesty. Sadly, he took it at face value. “Oh, all downwind then,” he said, “Not like this lady and gentlemen here. They’ve been beating all the way up The Channel”. I gave the Danes a pitying look, they deserved more than a Nando’s, and asked where they were headed tomorrow. “Home to Arhus, in Denmark,” he replied. They were going to beat to Denmark, into a 25 knot north-easterly? I felt very small and very un-heroic indeed.

I went back to the boat to get an hour’s sleep and discovered that the Thames Estuary waves had done what The Minch and The Irish Sea and Shetland had failed to do – so buried the bow in muddy water than it had somehow found its way into the cabin past a badly-sealed pipe and soaked my bunk. In the pouring rain, I spent the afternoon feeding money into the giant tumble-dryer in the laundry. At least I could get a good night’s sleep – but no, a glance at the weather and 25 knots was already out of date, it was now going to blow 33 knots unless – you guessed – I got up at 0530 and got round Dungeness by 0900…

At least by now I knew how dark it was at 0600, and I swore never to plan long passages in late September ever again.

Luckily, I like Dungeness. You can walk on the beach and see if the 30 knots blows you over, you can buy the freshest fish off the boat, you can look at Derek Jarman’s garden or you can sail past and see the moment when you leave Kent behind and the water instantly turns from brown to blue. Even with just the genoa out so as to be ready for those 33 knot gusts I went past at 8 knots with the tide under me. The sun was out, I hadn’t been to Nando’s, and I didn’t have to beat to Denmark.

Cape Wrath, Ardnamurchan, Muckle Flugga, eat your hearts out. This is what a proper headland looks like. Two lighthouses, a nuclear power station and an aggressive military firing range.

Then, when you’re round it and sheltered from those big waves, and you only have your genoa out ready to roll up when the gusts come, you can relax a bit and make a bacon roll and look at interesting places like Rye and Winchelsea and Fairlight and Hastings and Pevensey Levels. Rather annoyingly I had planned my gust avoidance strategy so well that it never went much above 25 knots, and having got up so early I thought I would carry on to Brighton instead of stopping as planned at Eastbourne, getting as far away as possible from this oddly windy corner of the country. For the last two days they had introduced the Inshore Waters forecast by announcing ‘light winds across the entire country except for the far South East’. Surely for the first time ever, just for me.

A yacht was closing fast from astern, so I looked it up on the AIS to see what kind of superyacht was doing such speed. To my disappointment it was only a few feet longer than me, en route from Sweden to the Panama Canal. It was haring past at 8 to 9 knots under full sail. I checked its details on an AIS app and it was clearly as much a racer as a cruiser, and its track showed that it had left Ijmuiden on the Dutch coast the same time I had left The Swale, then gybed off Lowestoft and again off Dover. They clearly liked sailing the angles, as we (ex) racers like to say, as they went right up the beach at Hastings before gybing out past me and around Beachy Head. Again I felt very unheroic so at Beachy Head I put up a reefed mainsail and began to speed up a bit…

I can’t take Beach Head lighthouse seriously. It just looks like a child’s toy plonked at the bottom of the cliff by mistake

…past my favourite cliffs of all, the Seven Sisters…

Norfolk, own up. Those sandy bluffs are not cliffs at all, are they?

..to be in to Brighton Marina at teatime, and parked next to an absolutely immaculate wooden motor-boat, a Dunkirk Little Ship-type gentleman’s motor cruiser. It was both hot and breezy, so I had hung out more damp things to dry, including some charts. The immaculate motor-boat’s immaculate owners came by and we got into conversation. They had been up to Henley (“Sooo much nicer than Dungeness!“) and to St Katharines for the wooden boat festival (“Sooo much fun! We stayed ten days!” At £190 a night! I thought). They caught sight of a soggy chart. Luckily, it was of the Outer Hebrides; this would show them. “I say, you haven’t, have you? On your own? I say! Chapeau!” This was more like it, I could feel heroic now. But they went on. “We went round too, didn’t we? Yes, in the old girl here! Suuuch fun, wasn’t it?”

Finally I was far enough West for the weather forecast to promise nothing more than 20 knots, and I had planned the last two days carefully. First, a stop for my last fish and chips and ice cream of the trip, and what better place in Sussex than Littlehampton? Only three hours from Brighton, the sun was shining and it was as hot as late September can be. Perfect. To cap the day Jamie and Ruth were nearby, with Jamie’s sister Charlotte, and we could catch up on tales from Kinlochberbervie (The bog, bothy, bridge, birds and beaches blog post). I pottered out of the marina and hoisted sails past the pier and that odd thing that takes you up in the air. As I said at the beginning, I have never much cared for Brighton.

I suppose from seaward it is a bit less grungey than in The Lanes

Then I spotted a yacht on a not-quite parallel course. It seemed to be a similar size but had no AIS so I couldn’t check. It was slightly ahead, and must be going to Littlehampton. This wouldn’t do! After yesterday’s humbling experience I wasn’t going to be beaten by anyone. Raymond wasn’t taking the best racing line and often ignored little windshifts, so I fired him and steered myself for the next hour and half to make sure we slowly but surely pulled through to windward and a comfortable quarter mile ahead by the time I turned in to Littlehampton. I tied up on the pontoon by the quay and when they came in went to take their lines and apologise for my ungentlemanly racing. They took ages to come alongside, so I felt in a good position to patronise them. They took defeat graciously, and again asked where I was going and how long I had been away. I couldn’t lie could I? I casually mentioned that I had left Itchenor three years ago and turned right. The implications of this slowly dawned on the skipper. “So this really is your last leg home?” he asked, suitably in awe I thought. “We’ve just been as far as Dover, now a few days pottering in The Solent,and back to Weymouth.” At last, I could strut! But my come-uppance was right behind: “I went round on my own a couple of years ago in this boat. Lots of fun, isn’t it? What was your worst bit?” I was tempted to say running down The Channel in 25 knots surrounded by more experienced deep-sea sailors, but bit my tongue,

Jamie, Ruth and Charlotte arrived and filled me in on all the Kinlochbervie gossip which included, probably for the first time ever, a deranged psycopathic hit and run driver, and it felt very odd indeed to be discussing in minute detail a village at the very opposite end of the country which I now felt I knew quite well. The ice cream kiosks had all packed up for the year, but Fred’s Fish and Chips still delivered one of the South Coast’s finest, which won’t trouble the national rankings, but I had to remember that in these parts you don’t ask for ‘a Cod Supper’.

I sat in the cockpit in the last of the daylight at 7pm, by which time it was really feeling like Autumn, and reflected that I didn’t need to feel heroic, it was the little snippets of insight into all these places around the coast that had made the trip so worthwhile, and no matter how much fun all these other sailors had had, I had my own set of memories, and I am sure they’re better.

Just when you were thinking, in what is probably the next to last post of the blog, that I had forgotten to mention its multi-award-winning status, here is a shot of the famous Littlehampton Fish and Chip Battleground. The locals all favour Fred’s because, as the woman in the Harbour Office pointed out, “It’s won lots of awards, you know.” Visitors, daunted by the queue, patronise Osca’s (sic) on the right. Tonight I finally got to try Fred’s. It has won more awards than the blog, but mainly for being West Sussex’s Finest Fish and Chips. I rest my case.