Sunday 31 July 2016 It was a sunny day with a cool northerly wind, a wind that was promised for a few hours before it turned southwesterley and freshened. We wanted to go in that direction so took an early departure enabling us to have a good sail for three hours or so along the Dunkirk coastline to Calais. Not the prettiest part of the world with heavy industry just off the beach including a steel works and three nuclear reactors generating electricity. The ...

Saturday 30 July 2016 It doesn't seem to matter how many different sources of weather info I use, there is rarely one that gets a reasonably close prediction, today just one got it right on a stable and ordinary day. We had a W 3 all afternoon and had to punch into a slight to moderate sea all the way but we made it from Breskens to Dunkirk in less than 7 hours, not bad going for 54nm. All the way we had fair weather, but inland it looked very grey and thr...

Friday, 06 May 2016 Departing a warm Boulogne at 10:40 this morning we passed the dredger coming in and joined a new current sweeping northwards faster than expected. With little breeze we headed out and then northwards to our turning point off Cap Gris-Nez. Buzzed by a Maritime Affairs helicopter and then by an official looking grey cutter without AIS it was apparent the French were taking security seriously, theirs and ours! The wind rose on the nose and ...

We left Sovereign at 0910 and motored till past Dungeness into varying seas and winds on the nose but after crossing the westbound shipping lane the wind changed and we had a glorious sail to Boulogne. Arrived in the "French" marina with lots of kind people helping us into a tad difficult berth without mishap. Much Gallic grunting and myttering got us in tidily, lots of "Messy" and many handshakes seemed to do the trick of cementing cordial relations with our Cha...