On 29 June we sailed from in the morning. We chose the route past . The wind was unfavourable against us and the fairway was narrow, so we had to cross. When we passed the last fairway buoy and left the mined sandbanks behind us, we made the beat to . On the way, the wind increased considerably, gusting to 6 in the meantime, and it was raining heavily. We sailed hard against the wind to Dover. Since the Brexit, there were some formalities to take care of. On our last trip to , we had to radio our details to Borderforce and then call Yachtline, which was time-consuming. Fortunately this has changed, everything has been digitised. You can set up an account where you can enter and change your data, which is then automatically passed on to all the authorities and you receive approval by text message. When we passed through the main traffic seperation zones, we had to pay a bit more attention and correct course 2 times because there was a lot of traffic on the way. After the traffic seperation zone the wind and wave decreased and it became calmer. 2 miles from Dover we radioed Port Control on channel 74 as usual. After 57.4 and almost 10 1/2 h sailing we reached Dover. After permission to enter the harbour basin, we radioed the harbour via channel 80, where we were assigned a berth in the new Outermarina. I was amazed, a lot had changed since the last time. We first booked the berth for 2 days. Due to bad weather forecasts, we extended it 2 more times. It would have been better and cheaper to book directly for 1 week or longer, but we didn't know that, well, next time. We thought about what we could do and took the bus to Canterbury and Folkestone. At first we wanted to go to Rye, but we realised that travelling by train in Great Britain has become expensive, so we saved ourselves the money and the frequent changes and took the bus. This costs only 2 pounds in contrast to the 20 pound train ride.
After 1 week in Dover, when the wind and weather were right, we sailed further along the coast. The wind was from the SE at 2 and the sea was calm. After a few hours we saw Rye across. I immediately thought of 2013, where my attempt to sail towards Spain failed here and I got stranded (Mayday, Mayday!). But not this time! As we sailed past the huge rock formations of Beachy Head and left them behind, I was glad to move on. Between the huge rock formations were idyllic beaches and villages from time to time. We decided to stop in Newhaven. The harbour was half dry and reminded me a little of Rye. In the main fairway next to the harbour, ferries from docked every few hours. That was also the reason why we sailed on quickly the next morning. All night long we woke up when the ferries passed through the narrow fairway and docked. In the boat, it always sounded as if a whole forest was being shredded.
After a few hours of sailing, we ran into a thunderstorm with light gusts, as predicted. We didn't notice the squalls that were forecast for the afternoon. And behind the storm front, blue skies awaited us. Slowly we saw the rocks of the Isle of Wight in the distance.
