For the first time in many months Trilleen is making westing, heading down the South coast to the finish line in the Solent. This penultimate leg took us round three great channel headlands: Dungeness, Beachy Head, and Selsey Bill and saw me consign two diversions to the bin before anchoring in Chichester Harbour.
Lacking wind Trilleen and I departed Ramsgate under engine on water so calm that it was denied even the grace of wavelets. Across this iridescent silty green Trilleen cut a straight wake past the port of Dover with its perpetually moving ferries and cruise traffic. Setting of into the windless dawn was necessary to make the ebb past Dungeness since at flood, it’s inauspicious appearance conceals a vicious tide with the whole press of the Channel Flood screaming through the narrows and into the Dover Strait.
Dungeness is almost imperceptible, a shingle bank so low to the water that for many hours or the approach, it is only visible as a a line of heat blurred pylons leading to the blocky alien imposition of a nuclear power plant which appears to hover on the surface of a silvered sea. We passed close inshore within touching distance of the old 1904 lighthouse and its smartly white striped modern counterpart, before deviating slightly south at the request of Lydd Ranges where infantry firing was taking place.
Fixing to pass Dungeness on the ebb, for a boat as miserably slow as Trilleen, means that it’s impossible to navigate the next tidal gate at Beachy Head with a favourable tide. My original plan had been to take a break and moor at Sovereign Harbour in Eastbourne. I threw that plan away when wind filled from the north and the delight of surging forward under full sail over a flat sea with nothing more than slight slow rolling enticed me to continue down Channel. By the time we reached the towering chalk of Beachy Head, it was full dark and Trilleen was charging along with power to spare.
The long shallow Sussex bay, with Shoreham by Sea at is apex, and Selsey Bill at the far western edge stretched out as Beachy Head fell astern, and here I consigned the next plan to dust, bypassing the soulless concrete of Brighton Marina, in favour of what was now a reach under reefed main in 20 knots. By the time we threaded our way north of the Rampion Wind Farm, Trilleen was plunging forward off her own wake to crash into the water ahead her tubby bow throwing sheets of spray across the deck, and was on the edge of needing another reef to allow the Hydrovane self steering to keep control.
From Dover onwards I had been chasing a series of what turned out to be fellow RNSA and service yachts including Silent Running, and Curlew IX, whose immediate presence, coupled with the high level of traffic that concentrates in the inshore zone of the Channel, had denied me much rest. These are the circumstances which make nights long and hard at sea, however many cups of black tea I drink. It was a welcome dawn that saw me on the approach to the Eastern Solent, facing the final headland of this passage.
The scrubby shingle fringed, tree surmounted bank of Selsey Bill can divert unwary vessels far to the south, leaving them in the wrong conditions fighting the ebb pouring out of the Solent. This morning though conditions were perfect to exploit the shallow cut of the Looe Channel running between the headland and the Owers Bank. As the seabed came rushing up to meet us a pair of dolphins joined Trilleen. Uncharacteristically they were alone together without pod – perhaps mother and calf. They played around my bow for a few minutes before, as always, deciding Trileen was too slow and boring to be of prolonged interest and shearing off to return to the serious business so hunting.
Exiting the channel into the Solent proper saw the wind which had served so well for many hours fell light, and I forced an entrance to Chichester Harbour under engine, bringing Trilleen to her anchor in hard mud at East Head.