Don’t cross the Dover Strait. It’s thick with traffic out there

Remembering when fog, calm and a dodgy Seagull outboard conspired to make a Dover Straight crossing a high stress experience for Dick Durham

Forty years ago this summer I made my first Channel crossing according to an old, delaminating, mildewed and fading logbook. It is the first logbook I ever kept because prior to owning Almita, my 26ft, engineless, Bermudian centreboard cutter, built in 1906, all my cruising had been made in open boats. It was bad enough sleeping under canvas let alone trying to keep the pages of a logbook dry.

In June 1984 my crew, Pete Willetts and I departed Leigh-on-Sea in the Thames Estuary to ‘go furrin.’

Although it is accurate to describe Almita as being engineless, that is not to say we were without a propeller completely: a heavy old Seagull outboard was ready to be shipped on the dinghy when the wind died. And the wind did die frequently. Before even getting clear of the Thames, we anchored off Margate where I went in search of a garage: ‘Carrying four gallon-cans of petrol is an exercise in digital athletics. I found after many alternatives that the thumb under one handle and the four fingers under the other worked best…’

Under the wobbling escort of dinghy plus outboard, lashed to leeward we crept into Ramsgate in dead calm, where Thanet District Council charged us £6 for the night.

The next day we picked up a light south-east breeze and sailed out to the South Goodwin light-vessel where we stemmed the tide hugging her side as the fog came down. The double roar of her diaphone, every 60 seconds, had her ear-defender-wearing crew advising us, between blasts, not to cross the Dover Strait.

‘It is thick with traffic out there,’ one said.

But as soon as we had 1.5 miles of visibility, we set off, anchoring seven hours later in the shallows between Gravelines and Dunkirk West.

We mustered at 0200 the following morning and fetched Dunkirk proper, paying £5 for a 24-hour stay. Next came Nieuwpoort, Belgium.

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Day four was still windless and we hobbled into Zeebrugge for petrol. We also had the outboard in pieces on the stern-sheets while Pete endeavoured to find out why it kept stopping. In the searing heat and among the fish-heads, blooms of diesel oil and fuel-stained warps lying on the filthy surface of the harbour we were keen to get away as soon as possible. But we were delayed by Customs and Immigration.

Two officers were not overly impressed with our boat or our attempts, dressed in bathers, to get the various parts of Seagull re-assembled.

‘You have no engine?’ one asked incredulously.

‘Yes, here,’ I said pointing at carbonated bits of Seagull scattered on last week’s newspaper.

‘You are a long way from home,’ he added, as though poor Almita belonged on the Serpentine.

They took down every particular of boat and crew and suggested we should purchase new flares before leaving harbour as the few we had were out of date.

We continued port hopping: Breskens on the Scheldt, then an overnight stay in Maasluis after a hairy wind-over-tide sail up through the busy Hook of Holland as the steel walls of towering freighters provided nerve-wracking wind shadows.

Fog continued to dog our progress until off Scheveningen we picked up a fresh westerly breeze which increased to Force 7 by the time we entered IJmuiden pier-heads: ‘With double-reefed main and both headsails she frothed half-broaching in heavy seas…’

Under staysail only we sailed into the North Sea Canal lock using an anchor over the stern to stop her before hitting the boat in front of us, as the lock bottom was concrete, it at least acted as a drogue for long enough to get a fender in. Six days from the Thames we surged up the North Sea Canal under headsails alone, shipping water into the cockpit in the gusts which put a split in the jib.

Sailing into the middle of a city seemed surreal, but Amsterdam was a city for sailors. Within walking distance, we found both a sailmaker and a marine engineer to effect repairs. The pigs of lead ballast which had slid up out of the bilge in the gusts we replaced ourselves.

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The post Don’t cross the Dover Strait. It’s thick with traffic out there appeared first on Yachting Monthly.