Wild & Woolly Ramsgate

We had a few days free, so thought we'd 'pop' along to Ramsgate - never been there, heard good reports, would get us away from jobs in the house for 3 days, boat hasn't moved for almost 4 weeks since the completion of the big adventure (see May to early Jul) ... all good excuses.

Much delving into charts, almanacs, tidal stream atlases and the East Coast Pilot showed that Gillingham to Ramsgate could all be done on a fair tide, given a reasonable following wind (literally).  It's down to how the tide flows around North Foreland.  The return journey requires setting out into a foul tide for an hour or so, or having a foul tide at the end in the Medway, or stopping somewhere on the way - more of that later perhaps.

Ramsgate west marina, town in background

So we stocked up with 4 days food (it's a 3-day exercise and we expect to eat out, but you can't be too careful), and settled in at Gillingham yesterday - delicious that, on a Sunday evening when many around us were leaving no doubt for work the next morning.

The alarm went off at 0530, and because we are out of practice and we messed around getting out of our new berth for the first time, we exited the lock into the Medway at 0700.  A fine SW F4 was behind us and we zoomed out of the Medway, across the Cant along Four Fathoms Channel with one reef in the main and half the genoa.  Here the wind began to build and speeds of 8.5 kn SOG (speed over ground = speed through water + tide) were achieved.  Helming was exciting but also hard work, and the forecast for Ramsgate later was even more wind (18 gusting 25kn), so we prudently put the second reef into the main - we can do this all from the cockpit which is great for safety and communication, especially with extremely lumpy seas ... did I mention that we were sailing for miles, and miles offshore, with just 2-3m under the keel - that's the Thames Estuary.

We then went up Queens Channel before turning starboard down to North Foreland and past to Ramsgate.  This is because we didn't fancy the 'overland route' near the N Kent coast (recently re-buoyed) because it has even less depth and we were on a falling tide.  The turn to starboard coincided with more than the promised even more wind, and the last bit of the Thames Estuary did it's best lumpy seas (short, steep, breaking).  So we furled the foresail (easy to say, hard to do in a 30kn wind) and motor-sail tacked down to Ramsgate (it's pointless motoring straight into the wind and waves, they slow you down too much).  By then we were seeing 35kn sustained gusts (F8 gale).

It was too rough to douse the main or deploy fenders and warps, so after seeking permission by VHF to the Port Control we shot into the harbour using the recommended yacht track to minimise encounters with ferries, and did all that prep stuff in the Royal Harbour whilst motoring in circles (to avoid being blown into a corner).  We were gently  told off by Port Control for entering with a sail up, and we briefly touched bottom because we'd forgotten about the sandbank in the middle of the inviting open space before the pontoons - but we slotted into a berth without too much palaver despite the fierce cross-wind and partly down to helpful neighbours catching our lines and doing the right things with them.

A small exploration of Ramsgate will be followed by a bigger one tomorrow - and there may be a report on that.  We did sit on a bench and watch the inshore lifeboat go out to an approaching yacht who presumably had no engine power, and while they helped them into harbour two bigger lifeboats went out and zoomed off somewhere - it was that kind of day.