Sunday 9 June 2013

I bet you think I plan these?  No?  Oh well.  So this time I have, a bit, by taking some pix I think look good and preparing them for upload, so here goes:

Phew!  That was close.  At least I didn't do a Timothy Spall and actually hit it, I just aimed for it and got a bit enthusiastic.  And for any smart alec who says I should have passed it on the other side, well yest I should, but it marks the Shipping Lane, the very bit we want to avoid 'cos it has Ships in it!  That was on the Sunday, our crossing, and so was this:

What the...  Who's that with Nicola?  Oh, it's our lovely pilot.  Want a better view?

You can see how much Nik wanted to see these, for simply ages, and it's not exactly en route but our pilot was very resourceful, another?

Aren't they wonderful, and truly awesome?  What, 70 odd years old?  Concrete legs, called Red Sands, and there are loads of such, the next one we could see is Shivering Sands, and you do, shiver...
Then adjacent to this, I drove us right thru' the middle of this...

Well yes, you're right, I can't be taking this picture (I did) and steer at the same time, this is as we were leaving, and the little sticks on the right are the other Forts, Shivering Sands that I mentioned.
Then there was the little matter of crossing the shipping channel proper, at right angles, and timing it...

It's actually very hard to know if you'll get there first or them, not in this case of course, but with two others I'd have thought they would get there first but in fact we beat them both, by putting on a bit of a spurt at the end just in case!!  Let me show you a buoy:

Another one we missed, just, and that's a North Cardian Buoy, meaning we must go North of it.  I can't quite remember what the thing that looks like a shark diving with an endangered species placard actually is.  Nothing important, providing you miss it.   Just to go back a bit, our Saturday night gave us a very picturesque view from Stangate Creek of the Kingsnorth Coal Power Station (now shut down):

Isolated?  Well there were 3 other boats, sailing vessels, moored not that far away.  It's the only time we've used our anchor;  very peaceful if a little exposed.  I had loads of pictures of bridges on the Thames, and us, but they seem rather pointless now.  Oh well, here's one we nearly hit:

That's me preparing to do my Jesus act (the mast like a cross over my shoulder) which I do, while pilot Mark tests the height with his head!  I can't show you us crashing thru the waves because we were too busy hanging on, also you need a movie which takes ages (and lots of precious MBytes) to up and then download.  I don't even have a picture of Archangel here in Dunkirk, next time, for now here's a sunset here, or two:


That's all the salt spray on the windows, oh yes we had plenty on the windows, and had to use the wipers, a lot!  Then another with cleaned windows - bye for now.




2 comments:

  1. So what are those things Nik's looking at? Forts? From the 2nd world war?

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  2. Glad the crossing went well. Think of us battling with the traffic going through the Straits of Gibraltar - probably next month. When will you be moving into the canals?

    You should have annexed Red Fort and turned it into a country like the guy who has Sealand off Harwich :-)

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