We left Calais on the last but one bridge opening, on the morning tide which was at 7am, which meant that again we fought the last hour or so of tide, but this meant we should be going with the tide till just before Eastbourne and so it proved to be.
The channel crossing was a breeze, especially as we had sorted out our French data sim so I could use the Boat Beacon AIS app on my IPad. Which was quite useful, see the picture. However, the thing with AIS is that you simply cannot rely on it. I think it’s very useful when you have visibility but we saw several boats without it, including a small ship. So in fog I simply would not rely on it in any way, not to mention of course that most yachts and fishing boats do not have it.
We had a bit of breeze against us, only about 12 to 15 knots which really wasn’t a problem until we got to bloody Dungeness and then with wind over tide the sea got a bit lively and we were slamming in to the waves for a couple of hours. Which wasn’t so much of a problem for us but it did prove to be a problem for Lucy as she could not move around very well with her world moving around like a tumble dryer. But we put her in her car seat and let her watch Peppa Pig and fed her juice and biscuits which she seemed fine with.
We got in to Eastbourne about 3pm without any real issues. We intended to leave at 4am the next morning which meant we did a massive shop in ASDA, grabbed a curry and a Thai takeaway and went to bed around 9pm.
Cost : £35 yes we’re back on the south coast! And you can tell from the prices.
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