July 2, 2011: Eastbourne - Dover.

The destination for today is Dover, a trip of 45 miles.
Again the weather is beautiful when we leave the Sovereign Harbour of Eastbourne. The passing of the lock went very quick. As we left with low tide, the channel from the lock to the sea was a challenge as on many places the depth meter indicated 0,0...! This means we have no water under the keel, but we didn't got stuck.

Once at sea the wind was 10 knots and at 09:00 we set our half-winder sail.
As we have no pictures from the ship under the half-winder, we asked Sam again to make a reportage of the Boekanier from the dinghy.
Sam was more then happy to do it and the result of this expedition can be seen in the picture show at the bottom of the blog-page.
The half-winder has bright red and blue colours so you can't miss it.

Later that day the wind disappeared and we had to motor the last part to Dover.
We arrived in Dover at 19:00 CET.

Sam cooked our meal: rice with stew and tomato sauce
We had decided to drink our steigerborrel ashore and after dinner we went into town, close to the beach.
We suddenly saw a nice bar, but it was the bar of some kind of club.
It turned out to be the Royal Cinque Ports Yacht Club. We, as fellow yachtsmen, invited ourselves to this club and once inside this very old and traditional establishment (founded in 1872, it is the fifth oldest yacht club in England), we were very cordially received by the chairman. He asked us to write all our ship details in the guest-book and then he told us: Make yourself feel at home and the bar will be your oyster for the evening. We didn't needed any more encouragements and attacked the bar and the beer pumps.
It turned out that the Club had that evening their annual BBQ and so we were also invited to join that event. (Yes, we had a double meal that evening..)

We had a very nice evening, talking to all these fellow yachtsmen who had great interest in our journey. Also they told us that there would b a nice fireworks later that evening and that that was the reason for all the crowd on the beach.
At 11:00 o'clock we left the club after having thanked out hosts for their great hospitality.

We watched the fireworks from the deck of our ship and were very grateful to the community of Dover to offer this nice welcome.
Tomorrow we will leave England and cross the Channel for France again.


We will keep you updated
Cees, Sam and Oscar.