So we have reached France after many days in the beautiful Netherlands and a cross-over through Belgium. Today we didn’t cross to England mostly because we needed 2 tidal gates and we missed one, but we made it to Calais which is just across the English Channel.
Sailing in this region of the globe is a whole new thing; you can no longer get up when you want and just go somewhere and expect to arrive a few hours later to a comfy place. No, no, there are tides of 5 metres, and with them tidal streams which push you one way or another and basically make you move very fast, or not move at all, depending on where you want to go and when you want to go.
Being in the straightest part of the channel makes it even worse because currents on one side push you North and a mile away push you South, creating race conditions and big waves.
On top of that there are sand banks and wrecks which you cannot cross, danger buoys, and there’s the wind which conditions your movements as you cannot sail into the wind, and not very well running downwind either, at least not with strong winds.
Lastly, there are many places where you cannot enter at certain times because of the tide height; we arrived to Calais just at the right time and only had to wait a tiny little, but had we arrived later and we would have had to wait 8 hours until the harbour lock opened for us to come to a safe haven (because it only opens 2 hours around high water (HW)).
So planning is what we have been doing recently… at what time must we leave to get the wind from the right direction, with the right force, with not such big waves, and where the stream pushes you to where you want to go. If you miss that you need to wait for 12 hours which may mean getting up at midnight. If you get it wrong you may end up further away from where you started…
All good fun and a great learning experience 🙂
Some more pictures of Calais here:Â http://whitewitch.nl/calais-may-2013
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