Smack boys

Extricating ourselves from our mooring in Rye was not helped by the fact that the channel looked too narrow for Hejira to turn around. So, we motored astern (reversed) up to a corner where we thought we had room to turn. With the sides being shallower, we disturbed a lot of brown mud in our manoeuvres, but we were on our way – forwards.

Defying the upmarket feel of Rye, there are a lot of old and seemingly derelict boats moored in the harbour creeks, but, clearly, people live in some of them – amazing.

As we left the harbour we were reminded of the tragic loss of the Rye Lifeboat, “Mary Stanford” in 1928. 17 lives perished in their selfless efforts to reach the stricken Latvian vessel “Alice of Riga” which had collided with a German ship. The situation had actually been resolved, and a recall signal had been sent but not received by the lifeboat crew, and they continued on their doomed rescue mission. They all perished in the storm. It is, to this day, the biggest loss of life by the RNLI in a single operation. We had walked past the ‘Mary Stanford’ Lifeboat station on our long walk along the coast to Winchelsea. It stands alone , seemingly neglected and forlorn on the shingle bank behind the beach, miles from any other buildings. There was a  wreath hanging on the door and it was all quite poignant and thought provoking.

The big winds were again, thankfully, from behind and despite the rollers and breaking surf, we made a fast passage under sail to Ramsgate where Richard re-joined us after his charity golf day – he played brilliantly, apparently…

It seemed significant that there were at least 10, large Border Force boats moored in Ramsgate, and they all had ‘portaloos’ strapped onto their decks. A sign of the times?

This building ‘RAMSGATE HOME FOR SMACK BOYS FOUNDED 1881’ made us laugh, different times, different context.

With Richard back on board, our 50-mile passage to the Medway was into the wind, under engine and it necessitated an early start to catch a favourable tide. We chose to take the Swale channel inside the Isle of Sheppey and this required the raising of the rail/road bridge to allow us to pass with our 18.5m height clearance requirement.

We had projected a stop at Queenborough but given that it was early in the day, we had already lost time in Littlehampton and we wanted to visit the Chatham Maritime Museum, so we pressed on to the Marina which is to be the home to Hejira until we resume our adventure. Tower Bridge next !