Non Stop to Brighton

leaving Hoo for the last timeIt was Saturday Morning and I was aboard Enigma, crew and provisions aboard, waiting for the tide to bring enough water so I could cross the sill at Hoo Marina for the last time.

The final forecast could not have been better, light easterly or northeasterly winds were predicted for all sea areas on our route, with fair weather and moderate visibility holding for a few days. Lee was as relieved as I was and although he still took his sea sickness tablets, psychologically we were both much happier knowing that we should have a fairly easy passage.

The night before I had said my goodbyes to my friends and neighbours at Hoo, shook hands and exchanged gifts, but it was still a sad and quite emotional moment as we cast off the docklines and headed out of the berth. The tide was against us for the first part of the journey and the wind was heading us, so rather than lose time tacking this early in the journey we kept the sails down and plugged on under engine.

Leaving the Grain chimney well astern, we finally hoisted the main in 20 knots of breeze as we passed the forbidding metal tripods of the Red Sand Towers. These rusting gun turrets, once front line defence against air attacks on London in WWII, and then later home of first of the pirate radio stations ‘Radio London’, now stand isolated in the middle of the estuary like alien leviathans eerily stalking their next victim.

We took the deep water route out of the Thames, following the Princes Channel with the sea harmlessly swelling beneath us. The setting sun painted the thin high layer of cloud a glorious salmon pink as we watched the silhouettes of the inward bound ships against the magnificent sky.

Since it was still winter the long night ahead of us began early and it was pitch dark by seven o’clock as we passed the Princes Buoy. We kept the reassuring blink of the North Foreland light abeam of us, and headed out into a ink black sea.

I had said I would be on watch until Dover was behind us, which I expected to be somewhere after midnight leaving Lee and Paul to agree how they would take their watches. I wanted two of us on deck at all times, and with the three of us each taking four hours off watch I reckoned we should be able to get through the night without being too exhausted the following day. Paul said he would go down first as he was feeling tired already so he went off watch at eight, the plan being that I would swap with him after we had passed Dover in about four hours time.

It was a good clear night and after an hour or so I could see the familiar lights of Broadstairs climbing up the cliff side on our beam, and away off our starboard Bow the glow of Ramsgate cast shadows on the clouds as we rounded the Elbow and set a course for the next mark.

Our next programmed waypoint, the West Goodwin Buoy, was about eight miles away in what for me was unexplored territory. The buoy was at the opposite end of what is a well marked deep water channel around the Western side of the Goodwin sandbanks. My plan was to shape a course to hop along the route, confirming our position as we passed each buoy that according to the chart, would appear every two miles or so. I set a course on the autopilot, checked the heading on the GPS and cross checked that with what the chart told me to expect. All was well so we dropped the sails in the dying wind and motored on into the night.

The first marks off the end of the approach to Ramsgate Harbour appeared as expected and we altered course to compensate for the tidal drift and headed for our next buoy, but it was not long before I began to feel uneasy about our position. There was a light ahead where I was not expecting one to be. I checked the chart, and checked the light again, but I was none the wiser. I felt a rising panic as the depth sounder showed we had a gradually decreasing level of water beneath our keel and another look on the chart showed my estimated position put me very close to the shallows of the Goodwin Knoll.

A cold fear rose inside of me, I turned the boat toward what I thought was deeper water, but the soundings didn’t improve. I looked on the chart again and in the red glow of my night torch I could find little to illuminate the problem as I stared at the ghoulish shapes on the paper. Nothing made sense, I was quite frightened by now and my head began to spin as at any moment I expected to hear the hissing of water smashing against the concrete hard sands that have, in their long and notorious history, swallowed over two thousand ships and taken the lives of many seafarers.

I needed to take a breath, calm down and fix the problem. I cut the engine so if we were headed toward wherever the danger was, at least we would slow our arrival down. My sense of direction is normally very good and my instinct is often right, but on this occasion my perception of our position was completely wrong, which was why I was in such a panic. As I took a bearing on the North Foreland light and drew it on the chart I realised that the darkness had changed my idea of where the light was in relation to our course, and when I crossed it with a bearing from the lights of Ramsgate I realised that although we were over shallow water and I had been right to worry about our course, a minor alteration was enough to head us back toward safety and within a few minutes we sighted the first pin pricks of the quick flashing red of the Gull Stream Buoy.

With each passing mark my confidence grew, but I still felt annoyed with myself at how easy I had become confused, and as Lee and I slurped on pot noodles somewhere off the coast of Deal I vowed to check my position and heading at more regular intervals.

Ghostly beams of light probed the cloud base, as cars swung about the cliff top roads around South Foreland. The illuminated shapes of the Dover Calais ferries could be seen on the horizon, sliding across the black of the channel, whilst the occasional cluster of lights indicated the progress of shipping in the traffic separation zone. With the glow of Deal behind us and the shimmering black of the sea ahead, we were both feeling at peace with the world and enjoying the trip.

"Lee was seated on the pushpit rail"

Lee was seated on the pushpit rail at the back of the cockpit, his arms folded and feet stretched out relaxed. Although wrapped in his foul weather gear and thermals he looked for all the world as if he were slumped on a sofa in the warmth of his lounge, staring casually into the darkness as if watching TV, when a sinister shape caught his gaze. He quickly stood up with a concerned look on his face, leaning forward from the cockpit, his eyes squinting to see in the darkness.

He pointed out a thin black line in the distance off our Port bow. I quickly checked the chart, and my panic began to rise once more as I could see no possibility of it being the exposed sands of the South Calliper, unless of course I was lost again. We stared out into the night, still steaming full ahead parallel to the black shape. There was no mistaking it, we could both see it clearly, and although it was still a safe distance away, the fact that we could see it at all set my pulse racing with alarm.

My chart told me that in my current estimated position I should have a good eighteen to twenty metres of water beneath my Keel, and the depth sounder confirmed this to be correct, but it was of little comfort as the sands of the South Calliper rise steeply on their Western shore and at night judging distance is not as easy as it is in the daytime.

I confirmed my position again. This time I was confident there was nothing awry, according to all sources Enigma was where she should be, in safe water, but our eyes were not deceiving us, the gradually thickening line of the sandbank was getting closer.

I cut down the engine speed to half ahead, trying to establish what we were looking at. Once again, my crosschecking of the GPS and compass fixes said we were safe, the lights were flashing their correct rhythm and colour, the depth was correct, everything told me we were in perfectly safe water with nothing to worry about. The only things contradicting this were our own eyes as we crept inexorably toward the forbidding sand.

I took the boat off autopilot and with the black shape almost the length of the horizon by now I turned away from the approaching mass.

“It can’t be the South Calliper.” I said after another look at the charts and my pilotage notes. “We are only two hours away from high water and the sandbank barely breaks the surface even at Low tide. I am sure we are in the right place.”
“So what the hell is it then?” Questioned Lee

His question was answered a few nerve racking seconds later, when as the sandbank, now appearing to be three or four feet high and less than eighty metres away, revealed itself as the harmless but large wake of a passing ship, illuminated in the most bizarre way from the distant glowing lights of Deal behind us which were reflecting off the clouds. Relieved we turned our bows into it and Enigma lurched over the crest, crashing into the trough behind as our phantom Sandbank passed harmlessly beneath us.

We were making excellent progress and as we set course for Dungeness eighteen miles away, I still had an hour of my watch to go. With the lights of the shore fading astern of us, and the prospect of only three changes of course between now and our destination, the adrenaline of navigating in congested waters died away and was replaced with the tiredness and monotony of an overnight deep water passage. The last hour before I went off watch dragged, and I was pleased when the hatch slid back and a bleary eyed Paul emerged ready for his watch. We told him of our capers and he confessed to being dead to the world, only waking briefly when he was hurled from his slumber as we passed over our phoney sandbank.
I settled down, tired but contented my bones gradually warming in the comfort of my sleeping bag, as I was rocked to sleep by the gentle Channel swell and the noisy primal heartbeat of the diesel engine.

My Alarm was set for 04:00 but I awoke some time earlier and all appeared well, the engine was still throbbing, the movement of the boat felt right. Gradually I shrugged the sleep from my weary body and shuffled myself to the cabin window. The picture from my portlight was a magical scene, the cloud that had covered the sky earlier had cleared and now the moon was low over the horizon, the silver moonlight shimmering from the mottled surface of the dark water. All around were stars and, far away from the light pollution of the city streets, there were millions of them, dusting the velvet curtain of the night with uncountable constellations. I looked out to sea just drinking in the panorama of the open ocean.

At 04:00 precisely I drew back the hatch and presented my grateful colleagues with mugs of hot cocoa and hot sausage rolls. From the tiny portlight windows of the cabin the sky had looked impressive, but out on deck it was breathtaking. Stretching above us from horizon to horizon the sky was peppered with starlight, to starboard between the gloss of the water and the matt of the sky was the thick lightless border of the East Sussex coast, and to Port the fabulous moonlight danced on the calm sea.

The boys had enjoyed a trouble free watch. Apart from an inquisitive visit from a Customs and Excise cutter off Dungeness that had circled Enigma a few times before disappearing off to the west, and they had seen only one other vessel in the four hours since I had last been on deck.

Lee, who was by now ready for his bunk, finished his snack and disappeared below, leaving Paul and myself to enjoy the pre dawn watch on this most enchanting of nights. Although it was surprisingly warm for the time of year, it did not take long for the chill to begin gnawing through my layers of breathable fabrics and start to take some of the magic away from the experience. The moon set below the horizon, the stars faded and the final hour before dawn was cold and dark. Our only company was the steady wink of the Royal Sovereign lighthouse, guiding us on toward our next waypoint.

"our spirits were lifted" Paul and I we were too tired and cold to hold much in the way of conversation, but at the first hints of a greying sky astern of us, our spirits were lifted in the slow transition of night to morning as we watched a pink halo of cloud surround a yellow sun that rose against a pale grey sky.

We made sail as the breeze returned, turning a perfect sunrise into a perfect morning. The heat of the sun and the exertion of heaving the halyards warmed our bodies, as we shed our hats and gloves, letting our sweaty clothes feel the fresh air of the new day.

We passed by the black and white striped pole of the Royal Sovereign, and a short while later Lee joined us on deck as we finally reached Beachy head, the waypoint we had been heading towards for the last six hours.

By ten o’clock we were dropping our sails outside Brighton Marina watching the Sunday fleet prepare themselves for a race on a perfect sunny morning. The wind had strengthened to a light breeze and the fleet were heeling to full sail as they jostled toward the start line, whilst the Enigma crew prepared lines and fenders twenty one hours after we had first stowed them in the lockers.
The boat was soon secure and an exhausted Paul had begun his long journey home to Norfolk whilst Lee and I enjoyed a good kip before planning the next leg of the journey over a massive Chinese meal at the floating 'Pagoda' restaurant, which is moored inside the UK’s largest Marina.

If you enjoyed this story, find this and others in The weekender available here

Total Distance - 118.79 Nautical Miles, Total Time - 21 hours