Royal Air Force Yacht Club

Chris Aps

My wife, Jan, had saved and bought eight weeks of annual leave, four of which were to cruise the Dutch canals in our Beneteau Antares 9.80, a seaworthy, twin-engine fly bridge cruiser.

We had had the boat from new and she was our first command. Two years’ cruising, the Yachtmaster Coastal Theory and CEVNI were enough stimulus for us to take the plunge and cross the Channel, however daunting that still seemed. Sea Jay is based in Brighton, a mere 50 odd nautical miles to Lymington. Amazingly, it is over 65 miles going the other way to Dover, our cross-channel launching point.

Passage planning and pilotage had never been so comprehensive, all typed out in plasticised folders and all waypoints entered into both the chart plotter and hand-held GPS. The whole route down to the last detail had been lovingly prepared. We didn’t know at the time quite how valuable that was going to be.

May 2009 was the month for the Dutch trip. May Day (coincidence we hoped) Bank holiday saw us take the 20 mile leg to Sovereign harbour for a curry and overnight stop. A Dutch sailing boat on our pontoon had experienced a power surge of 280 volts down his shoreline. This had blown his battery charger. He came to check my power supply. But my charger had already been damaged and, once reset, never really worked in its usual sophisticated way again. An omen?

The tidal gate at Granville Dock in Dover Harbour required an 0830 departure from Eastbourne to give us a favourable tide and an arrival to coincide with both the gate and pubs to be open. (Yes, power boaters do plan around the tides!). We passage planned for 15 knots, a realistic and economic speed, even though impatience often meant us doing 20 or so. Sea Jay was a semi-planing (semi-displacement) vessel and her top speed was 25 knots and lots of diesel.

Passage from Eastbourne to Dover is not without hazards. Shoals, banks and tidal rips together with two active firing ranges and a nuclear power station add a little interest to quite a long leg. The actual arrival at Dover was pretty uneventful after calling up the Harbour Master well before entering the Western entrance and Marina Control afterwards for berthing. The sea state at the entrance was just as lumpy as Reeds Almanac had described and remained so whenever we crossed it.

Then the wind blew. A succession of Atlantic lows conspired to keep us bottled up (literally) in Dover, with high winds and high seas. We were there for five days.

Dover is not the best port in Britain to be stuck in for five days. Apart from the castle, (a brilliant day out), and Cullins Yard pub-bistro,( a brilliant evening out), the whole town is a bit of a dump. The Royal Cinque Ports Yacht Club was welcoming, pleasant, quaint, run-down and empty.   We liked Granville Dock marina, but our berth was below a very dirty boatyard which completely covered Sea Jay’s newly valeted decks with soot.

We made friends with a nice couple; yachties turned motor boaters, who were also weather locked in their lovely Dutch barge, waiting for their four months’ cruise on the French Canals.

We got impatient after a couple of days and accepted a forecast of south- westerly winds 5-7 decreasing 4 as offering potential for our crossing. Calais had a forecast of 13 knot winds. We thought we were very clever when we requested the sea state from the Master of an arriving French Ferry via Dover Port control. The estimate of about 1 metre wave height sounded good.

We headed north towards the SW Goodwin CM with a much bigger than a metre, following sea, and tried not to broach. Turning to starboard to make the crossing was going to be horrible. And it was, so we turned back. What took us half an hour going out took over an hour coming back, often at less than 2 knots into steep waves with narrow and equally deep troughs. As we crossed the Eastern entrance to return via the Western we heard Dover caution a departing ferry to avoid “a small white launch” (us). We were most indignant.

We finally departed Dover on the Saturday with fair weather and winds SW3, following our Dutch barge friends through the opening marina gate.

As it turned out, crossing the channel was almost an anti-climax. Perhaps a tribute to detailed planning, we both seemed to be on top of everything and really enjoyed the experience.

However thank heaven for fitting those expensive toys, especially the AIS and Sea-me radar transponder. Crossing the TSS was the maritime version of the Battle of Britain with loads of targets on the chart plotter. But it all made much more sense using the AIS-derived CPA to accurately manage deconfliction rather than just using eyeball judgements to keep clear of traffic.

The cross channel crossing took exactly 2 hours from Dover Western entrance to the start of the Passage Oest, finally arriving at the 1km long entrance channel into Niewpoort harbour at 1340, two hours after that. The day’s run was 58 miles and the first Belgium beer never tasted so good. Nor did the second.

Then the really strong winds blew again, frustrating our plans to head up the Belgium coast to Blankenberg before entering the Dutch canals at Vlissingen. It was pleasant enough at Nieuwpoort, with an old town near the marina and a newer town along the beach.

We ate well at two of the three Yacht Clubs in the marina and could have entered the Belgium canal system there had we chose. Instead we took a tram all along the coast to Oostende (whilst smugly looking at the foul conditions out at sea) and caught a train to Bruges for the day. There we enjoyed the warm sun out of the wind, a canal cruise and the best lunch we have ever had in Belgium. Not all bad then.

Another four nights passed before the winds allowed us to continue our journey to Holland.

Initially the seas were smooth, which is how we like them in power boats, and navigation was as planned. Jan helming the whole way to Blankenberg allowed me to visually confirm our position against the few landmarks on an otherwise featureless and murky, concrete grey Belgium coast.

The Blankenberg harbour master could not have been more helpful, taking our lines, bringing our security pass and guiding us to the nearest refreshment 100m away. This was in the Yacht Club, a tiny, smoky local watering hole. They sold us a snack lunch and some milk and bread until we had resupplied.

My mobile woke us after midnight. No one rings at this time unless its bad news and we both instinctively knew that something was wrong.

My father had passed away peacefully in his nursing home. This was both a shock and a blessing. In recent months he had become increasingly frail and poorly with a deteriorating quality of life. He was 92. We decided that tomorrow would see us sorting things out and we went back to bed and slept badly.

It was a little surreal sitting on a boat in a Belgium marina using the mobile to arrange undertakers, funeral dates and so on. Typically at this time my brother was also on holiday. He was in a cottage in Cornwall, which of course has neither a mobile signal nor probably electricity. Finally he found out the news and decided to curtail his trip. Obviously our cruising plans would have to be curtailed too.

But we decided that as the weather looked settled, and that there was no particular urgency, we would continue to Holland for a few days and gently return to England well in time to help with family arrangements. After all we had worked quite hard to get so far.

Then we walked around Blankenberg, which was a typical Belgium seaside town, a bit run down and touristy. But then we were a little jaded. We found out later from German relatives that Blankenberg was where my father’s (Flemish) family always took their summer holidays. Strange he should die whilst we were visiting for the first time.

 Lunchtime took us to the “yacht club” for the Wi-Fi and some Leffe. The weather was quite hazy under a ridge of high pressure. Their meteo on the television appeared to show quite calm weather for the next few days. This turned out to be completely at odds with reality when I got onto the UK Met office website. A deep Atlantic depression was moving quickly eastwards and clearly was going to bring strong winds within the next 24 hours and for the next few days. We either return to Dover immediately or risked being stuck in Belgium or Holland.

Leaving the boat and trying to get trains and ferries to England did not appeal. So we finished our beer (of course) and quickly got ready for sea. Our log reads:” Force 3, E/NE, sea state smooth, poor visibility and foul tide all the way to Dover”. But our comprehensive passage planning was all there ready for an immediate departure. OCD is quite useful at times.

After a brief fuel uplift (a bit too brief as it turned out) we departed Blankenberg at 1410 (UTC + 2) and arrived at Dover at 1845, logging 74.4 miles. The visibility was pretty awful, less than a mile most of the way. Had we been flying, it would have been IMC. However it was good enough to see a largish French freighter launching itself out of Dunkirke on a collision course, confirmed both by constant bearings and an AIS closest point of approach of a few metres. Notwithstanding he was obviously the give way vessel, we were forced to stop and orbit whilst he carried on a steady course and speed. The language on Sea Jay turned a little bleu and Lord Nelson went up yet another notch in our estimation.

That night we decided that a very early departure from Dover to get back to Brighton was essential if there was going to be any chance of beating the approaching bad weather, forecast to be SW 4 increasing 5 to 7. (We did not have the energy to continue that evening, nor were we experienced or daft enough to contemplate a night passage).

Up at 0500, we cast off at 0530 into an increasing wind and gloomy skies. Crashing through the Dover harbour entrance (again) we met quite lumpy seas, enough for us to question whether to continue. Jan the braver felt confident, so we did. Worryingly, a RN warship did not and passed us going into Dover, hopefully as a planned visit and not because he knew something we didn’t.

These turned out to be the roughest conditions I had ever helmed in. I applied power-boaty manoeuvres, using the throttle hard to make the fastest speed possible, from wave to wave, slowing down, speeding up, altering course to weave between the crests. It was a bit like downhill skiiing. We made surprisingly good time, sometimes reaching 20 knots, often slowing to eight or less.

We had the bit between our teeth, determined to get back. Fenders wrapped themselves around guardrails (we can’t easily stow them, so they lie on the side decks), secured cockpit covers became unsecured and, as we discovered later, the radar arch had worked loose.

At first we thought that if we made it just to Eastbourne, we would have done well. But past Dungeness the seas seemed to have become easier (or I had become better at it) and we went for Brighton. The over falls around Beachy Head should have been a bitch under these conditions, but were a pussy cat.

There were big beam seas developing on the home run between Newhaven and Brighton. “Securite securite securite” on Channel 16 announced Gale Warning for Thames, Dover, Wight imminent. That’s within six hours isn’t it?

Half an hour later, the approach to the narrow marina entrance in this strong south westerly was demanding and best taken at speed to give good control. Naturally, strong winds had brought out the yachties in a long procession of departing vessels. I had to go around and orbit on my first approach as one stopped at the entrance to raise his sails. Oh well, we had made it.

But only just. We refuelled with lots of money and returned to our berth, moored up and started to hose down the boat. Suddenly, as in switching on a light, cacophonous banshee howling through hundreds of halyards heralded a wind so strong that water from my pressure hose blew at right angles and couldn’t reach the hull. Really just in time then.

Dad, our Guardian Angel, perhaps repaying us for the time that I, a fellow doctor and a pilot friend flew ourselves to Majorca to medevac him home with Legionnaires’ disease, and happened to arrive just in time to resuscitate him after he had stopped breathing, unattended, in a hospital room. But then that’s another story…

   Not quite to Holland.pdf