Last legs 2

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On Monday, the August Bank Holiday, we sailed back to Brightlingsea with one reef in the main and two in the genny. Twenty four miles in three hours twenty, grey sea and grey sky, shallow water when we got there which forced us to anchor and wait for a rise in the tide. All the while the wind rose. In the harbour entrance one yacht was already aground; we crept in with only twenty centimetres under the keel. What a contrast to yesterday but how typical of our trip. We have taken our chances and they have been slim ones, sometimes.

The wind has not been kind this summer. In the Channel, which was to be our cruising ground, it relentlessly pushed the sea up towards the virtual cul-de-sac of the Dover Strait, bringing almost uninterrupted Atlantic swell and bands of grey weather, both always against our efforts to go west. Facing that challenge was great for a while and Essex has been a marvellous alternative. But even from here we need a wind from anywhere but the southwest to get home. We won't get it this week. We must go back to London and leave the boat till next weekend. Then come hell or blue water we will bring her home. Only then will the journey be done. Ten weeks since last in St. Katharine's, ten weeks of high winds and none, ten weeks of exhilarating work alternating with fabulous sloth, ten weeks in which we have discovered a different rhythm, have just gone with it, Alice and me, gone with what wind and tide would and would not have us do.

We have not been alone. On the way out of Dover a dolphin swept under the boat, it's back and dorsal fin a momentary silhouette in a wall of smooth green water. I was the only one to catch a glimpse of it; as was Alice the only one to see a spout of water off Fécamp. Was it a whale? On every shore were birds - gulls who bullied the terns, waders wading, and one smart feathered soul who stamped on the mud to bring up the worms. We were watched by seals, and visited miles from shore by curious bees, one of which flew up a trouser leg. The middle of the Channel was too far out for insects, yet a few gulls rested on the water and chevrons of migrating birds swept by on the hastening wind.

Then there has been the company of friends and family along the way, some of whom are still at sea. Oliver and co. - last seen catching our lines in the lock at St. Katharine's - are, we think, somewhere in Cornwall waiting for weather to cross Biscay, then the Atlantic, then wherever. Our adventure is over for now, and theirs has hardly begun. We say thank you and good luck to everyone who has been part of this wonderful summer.

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