We often sail South or West from our home port of Eastbourne, so for our late Autumn cruise, Hodge and I decided it to shake it up a bit and head East along the North coast of France and Belgium. Vlissingen in the Netherlands had been on our ‘list’ of places to sail to after I was set it as my passage planning exercise during our Offshore Yachtmaster examination many years ago. We’d always wanted to ‘close that circle’ and execute the passage, and now it was finally time.

Being October, finding a weather window was much like finding a needle in a haystack. Tough. And that was to be the ongoing story of the trip. Studying the various forecasts and synoptic charts the week before, it was looking like we would be able to get to the Netherlands with a favourable wind direction (if a little strong) but coming home would be our challenge. With this in mind our plan was to do one big leg to get as far along the coast as we could, then we would be able to hop our way home in small chunks whenever the weather would allow.