This was another sunny day with F2/3 forecast from the SE, so it was looking like another motorsailing day. The main headlands on this leg would be Dungeness and S Foreland, but neither had particularly difficult reputations and on a day like this we would be able to go fairly close. So this was to be a fairly straightforward trip across the two bays to S Foreland and then up the N Kent coast, weaving between the shallows near the Goodwin Sands, and then into Ramsgate.  If we got tired / fed up we could always go into Dover, which we would be passing two miles offshore to give us a chance to time our passage through the stream of ferries coming and going.

We locked out of the marina at 0930 and had about 6 full hours of fair tide pushing us along, past Bexhill, Hastings and Rye. The coast line then became very low and flat as we approached Dungeness, clearly identifiable of course with its big nuclear reactor cuboid buildings. Just before the power station, rather alarmingly, is the Lydd Firing Range, which we had been told was active and so we stayed well away. We still heard the heavy guns and just kept our heads down.

The wind, which started light, continued to drop all day, so it was motorsailing, and pure motoring for a while when we had almost no apparent wind over the deck. The saving grace was that we had sunshine and warm weather, so it was not too difficult to decide to press on to Ramsgate to make the most of it. Lots of ferry dodging around Dover, past the port and the famous white cliffs. I think that this stretch of coast, from Dungeness up to the white cliffs of Dover was probably the least interesting so far on the voyage.

Then it was up the final stretch of Kent coast, which was much prettier, past Deal and Sandwich, inside the Goodwin Sands into Ramsgate. This was very much a working harbour as well as a rather old marina. We moored up close to a UK Boarder Agency patrol ship, and the harbour was busy with fishing and wind farm boats.

A good trip of about 63 miles in 11 hours, leaving us well positioned for crossing the Thames if the weather holds.