A visit by the coastguards…

October 1-3, 2020

After two nights in Dunkirk we where ready to sail into the English Channel through Dover strait. We sailed along the coast and had the tide with us (about 3-4 knots through the strait) so it was pretty easy sail. We sailed to Boulogne-sur-Mer, which we reached short after lunch.

We took a walk around town and up to the old town where we ate some waffles. After that we went to the boat stores around the marina to try and find some stuff we needed, but did not find that much. It is hard to find the right stuff when you’re in a foreign country and not have a car so that you can go to bigger shopping centres.

The tidal difference really started to show when we sailed closer into the channel.

After our walk around town we spent the evening on the boat and prepared for an early morning departure once more. This time we were to sail towards Dieppe. A lot of boats that want to go through northern Europe fast usually sail from Bolougne-sur-mer straight towards Cherbourgh, but for us there was not a weather window to do that so we sailed towards Dieppe instead (how we sail can be seen under Our Route). From Dieppe we would then have a shorter sail to Cherbourgh when the time came.

And on the way to we had an exiting meeting with the coastguards. Shortly after we passed Dover strait we got called up on the VHF by a close-by coastguard ship. First time someone called us on VHF so pretty nervous. They asked us a couple of questions, where we headed and so on. Then they wished us a good trip and we thought that was it.

But later in the day when we approached Dieppe the same ship approached and called us up again and said they where gonna come aboard on a routine check. So we started the engine and took down the sails, prepared all our paperwork. We where told to maintain our course to Dieppe with normal speed. The officials (four in total) jumped onto our boat while underway from a dingy they launched (pretty cool). They stayed onboard about an hour, check paperwork and the boat. Everything was in order and they where really nice. It was also nice that everything happened while being underway, so that our timeplan didn’t get to messed up.

When we approached Dieppe we had the most amazing sunset.

The following day we took a walk around Dieppe, watched the beautiful cliffs and had a Moules Frites and a beer in the sun.