Reinstated Blog Page: Dover to Calais, Friday 3 May

Hmm, somehow I managed to delete my page 'Bonjours de Calais'.  That would be because the blog instructions were displaying in French - until I saw that they could be changed to English - so I thought I'd deleted was an old draft - in fact it was a published page!

So to fill in the gaps we crossed the Channel Dover to Calais last Friday - the wind direction had changed to SW which was great for us and we seized the opportunity to go while we could.  In retrospect that was a great idea as the next day brought really high W winds which would have been horrid for our crossing.

The sea was kind to us and although there was a swell from the NEs of the week's bad weather in Dover, it was a bright and sunny crossing with easy force 3-4 breeze.  Skipper's manual navigation was spot on - took us to the Harbour entrance.  The only glitch was a wee steer around kindly French fishermen who decided to pair trawl right outside the harbour entrance!  A ferry didn't take too kindly - she was delayed and in the end decided to run over their net floats!  We are learning that the French do what they want when they want and that's just the way it is.

We arrived in 4 hours as estimated and were relieved to pick up a buoy and wait for high water to enter Calais marina.  We went ashore for a light dinner and early night ready to make haste the next day with plans to get through the canals.

Here's a couple of piccies ... until the next time - over! 

Au revoir Blighty!

A bit too close for comfort!

Salut from our buoy outside Calais marina - Mackesons was all we had on board (for cooking!)