I write this sitting in Brighton Marina, unable to believe my luck. It is a Bank Holiday Monday and the sun is beating down out of a clear blue sky. And we have had a glorious couple of days on the water.
Ever since we have owned boats, we have travelled regularly from our East Coast base to the South Coast to take part in various regattas. Because you have to get there for a specific date, and time off work is limited, and has to be booked in advance, this means you can't choose the weather. And the prevailing wind is from the south west.
We have lost count of the number of times we have head banged all the way there, often in “character building” conditions. And in fact we approach every trip down south with a sort of fatalistic resignation that it's going to be more of the same.
But not this time. For once we set off on a forecast of settled easterlies. Couldn't be better. Well actually, it could. It would have been nice if there had been just a little more, because both yesterday, from Levington to Dover, and today, from Dover to Brighton, we ended up motoring about half the time, because there simply wasn't enough wind for the required progress. But after all those years of too much it seems churlish to complain.
We're on holiday, after all, and sitting in the sun, motoring along in a flat calm, with the autopilot doing the work, and nothing to do but keep a look out for lobster pots, and admire the magnificent scenery (Beachy Head and the Seven Sisters never fail to impress, no matter how vile the weather) is a very enjoyable way to spend the day.
But even that is not why I'm feeling so lucky. If you travel down the Channel from east to west, it's virtually impossible to get fair tide at every headland (you can often do it the other way, but that's another story.) If you get fair tide at Dungeness, it'll usually be in your face at Beachy Head, or vice versa. Either way, it's acutely depressing.
With our first boat, I can remember going off watch at Beachy Head, spending two hours in my bunk, and coming back on deck to find the lighthouse still in much the same place!
But today, whether by good luck or good judgement (and I think it was more of the former) we managed to get past both obstacles with the tide underneath us.
According the RYA training syllabus - at least, this was the case a few years ago, when I was at night school - tidal atlases and tide tables are to be taken as gospel. If it says the tide will turn at 13.47 and it will be 6.5 m high, that is what you will get.
But experience soon tells you that things are nothing like that precise. Air pressure and wind direction can alter the height of the tide considerably - and all kinds of factors seem to influence its timing. Published tide tables are after all merely predictions - they don't claim to be anything more.
Anyway, I duly looked up high water Dover and filled in the relevant tidal atlas pages in the almanac (I always pencil in the time for each hour, to make sure I don't get confused!) It looked as though, if we left at 5 am (the earliest we feel like getting up on holiday!) we'd get to Dungeness just as the tide turned against us, and then we'd get to Beachy Head before it turned in our favour.
Needless to say we were later getting out of Dover than intended (by the time we'd got permission to leave the marina, and motored across the huge harbour to the western entrance). We admired a spectacular sunrise, just before we reached the piers at 05.25. I was afraid the tide would turn foul before we got to Dungeness. But it didn't. It kept going for at least half an hour longer than the Almanac diagrams predicted. And then when the tide did set against us, it wasn't as strong as we expected.
We approached Beachy Head two hours before it was due to turn fair - and passing a couple of fishing marks, it was plain there was no tide at all - slack water well ahead of schedule. And by the time we were passing our least favourite lighthouse, it was adding well over a knot to our boatspeed.
The reality was rather different from the mathematical predictions. But we weren't complaining. The problem is now I'm faced with doing a passage plan for tomorrow: through the Looe Channel and into the Solent. Getting the tide right here is critical. Can I believe what the Almanac tells me?
