Back home now following a good weeks sailing.

Following the Mid-Channel Breakdown and fix we spent Saturday and Sunday in Oostend.

There was the Oostend at Anchor event on with visiting classic boats from Dutch barges, and classic yachts to large square riggers.

There was also a Marine based market.

One stall was selling rope by the kilogramme.

14mm anchorplat was €2.00/m.

Jimmy Green want £ 3.50/m

40m found their way on board in short order.

This was spliced onto our 30m anchor chain and an soft eye splice added to the end.

The Chain splice was a joint effort by my son Jonathan and myself.

The eye splice was by Jonathan.

I had given up on it as the instructions we had where not very clear but Jonathan would not give up and spent a couple of hours working it out.

He produced a fine job.

The resulting 70m anchor cable was laid out on the pontoon and marked with cable ties every 5m.

The chain locker is now somewhat full.

Monday we headed off to Dunkerque in company with Neal, Debs and their kids in Morgana (a Beneteau Oceanis 400 )

Motored as far as Nieuwpoort and then a sea breeze picked up and we sailed the rest of the way.

About 3 miles short of Dunkerque we had a solitary dolphin playing in our bow wave for about 5 minutes.

We spent Tuesday relaxing in Dunkerque.

Wednesday we headed for Ramsgate.

We managed to get the tides just right and with a good F4 wind abeam Sirenia flew along at near hull speed (6.3 knts)

We followed the cost to Calais and then crossed the TSS at 90°

We only had to alter course for 1 ship.

Once across wa turned up the inshore side of the Goodwin Sands and with the wind dead aft and the genoa polled out we romped up to the entrance channel for Ramsgate.

At times we surfed on the waves at upto 7.7 knts.

We also had a lot of tide under us.

Once we turned to enter Ramsgate we found the the wind had increased to F6 with F7 gusts.

With the tide sweeping us past the entrance and quite a chop we had an interesting time getting in.

Thursday was spent sorting out a few things on the boat and the crew took The junior section of Morgana's crew to see the latest Pirates of the Caribbean film.

Friday we headed off to cross the Thames Estuary towards the Walton Backwaters.

We stated out with about 2 miles Visibility and not a lot of wind, so it was engine power again.

Morgana was to leave about 2 hours after us.

We where surprised when she caught us up after 3 hours.

We where soon very grateful for their presence as the Visibility dropped to 50m as we approached the Foulger's Gat.

this lets out onto the Black Deep that is the main shipping route to and from the Thames.

Morgana kindly waited for us to catch up by the buoy at the south end of the Gat.

Finding that was a bit difficult and only achieved once they had radioed us their position.

The electronic charts we have did not show the buoy's location exactly correctly.

We were surprised at how close we got to them before we saw them.

Niel had his radar running and said the the black deep was clear for the moment so we headed across with the intention of running along the shallow area on the north side of the Deep.

Just as we got there the fog suddenly lifted and we could see for miles.

The wind also picked up.

So it was up sails and off engine.

Once we could turn North east we got the Spinnaker up and managed to hold on to it all the way into the Backwaters.

We managed to anchor behind Stone point near Morgana on the 2nd attempt.

We had a BBQ and fire on the beach to finish the day off.

Saturday.

There was talk of going round Horsey Island in the dinghies.

I said why not do it in Sirenia.

So we did.

Neil, Debs and crew joined us and away we went.

All o.k. until we got round to the SW corner.

We must of touched the bottom 5 or 6 times from there to the Wade.

We ended up with the keel right up and the rudder blade only just in the water.

But we got round.

Sunday was a motor back to the Deben and our mooring.

There was some wind but it was light and on the nose.

The vis was only about 1 mile.

We found quite a few ships coming and going at the Harwich harbor entrance.

The mist lifted as we went up the Deben with the tide.

Had Fray Bentos Pies and tined spuds for lunch, cleared up and went home.

Miles this trip 217.5

Miles this year 288.4

Max speed this trip (GPS) 10.4Kts Tide assisted