51 57.53N 01 16.61E
Yesterday in Brighton we realised that there was a weather window between gales to get back to Shotley. We left Brighton at 1pm and arrived back in Shotley at 10am this morning. We had a mixture of sailing and motorsailing and some of the sailing was very good.
A couple of hours out of Brighton we crossed the Greenwich meridian so South Island came into the East for the first time. Near Dover John noticed a boat behaving strangely and it was dark by now. Then all of a sudden a boat zoomed up with 4 black clad men on board. They looked very scary and turned out to be the border agency and 2 of them came on board asking lots of questions and wanting to see our passports and ships papers. Obviously we passed as they went away presumably to pester someone else.
The only other excitement was a beautiful sunrise.
We just need to go and have nice hot showers and clean the boat and should be back in Woodbridge tomorrow.