Well, we didn’t actually go to China, but we did reach Delft, where the best Dutch china is made. Rather than catalogue each part of the trip, I thought on this occasion I would just pick out various highlights that might be of interest to members of the DCA.

We set off in our Drascombe Lugger from Dover for Calais in the middle of July, my crew being my younger son, David, who has accompanied me on almost all of my trips, and my nephew — also David — who sailed with me from the Channel Islands to Brittany and back via the Channel Islands to the UK three years ago.

We arrived at Dover very late in the evening, about 11 pm, to find when we prepared to launch that we had a flat tyre. Nevertheless we carried on down the slip, but found it fairly difficult to keep the boat straight with one tyre flat. When almost in the water we were challenged by the authorities and told we had no permission to launch there. As usual we pleaded complete ignorance of the rules, pointed out that the boat was effectively already in the water in any case, and they duly let us launch. It does seem very silly to have such a slip and then not permit people to use it.

The trip across the Channel was easy and straightforward, though as usual we tended to be carried too far south by the tide, and for the very first time French Customs came aboard in Calais, but were very helpful. However, we had an interesting day the next day; we set off from Calais to Dunkirk with a very light head-wind into which we motored, but it gradually swung round behind us. We cut off the motor and hoisted all the sails we had — in fact all six of them. After a very short time the wind started increasing and, within the space of about 10 minutes, it increased from about f1-2 to f4-5, with gusts of f6, and we gradually had to lower our sails until we were running under jib alone. I have never known a wind increase so quickly before. We had a slightly bumpy ride down into Dunkirk with the waves getting up, but got there without any problems and had a very good short sail under our normal rig down Dunkirk harbour itself where, even in sheltered waters, we were having a job to hold the boat upright. We heard other boats claiming it was blowing f7 that afternoon, but whether we actually experienced this ourselves or not I don’t know. We were interested to learn that Dunkirk makes its own Geneva Gin, the best one being, or having, a ‘Black Label’.

The rest of our trip up the coast was uneventful, though the sea off Zeebrugge was, as usual, very rough. Then we went through the Dutch inland waterways, seas and canals up to Rotterdam and on to Delft. In Delft we lowered all our masts and, by getting the boat absolutely level and even taking down our Red Ensign and oil lamps, were able to creep under all the bridges right into the centre of town and moor up — apparently the first boat ever to have done so.

We then started retracing our steps, though as far as possible down different waterways, and found that the wind was mainly now against us, although there were a few days of good sailing. We found many charming small Dutch towns, enjoyed particularly good sailing on the inland seas, and were fed extremely well in port. I managed to fall in one day when trying to haul the boat into a canal bank, much to my crew’s amusement, but dried off reasonably quickly.

The standard of seamanship in the Dutch locks was not high. We saw various boats, including one English, get themselves into a real mess, and our normal rule was to wait till the worst of the chaos was over before entering the lock, and then be one of the first to leave. The Dutch charts, in book form, do not survive water well and should be covered in clear Fablon at the earliest opportunity.

Finally we got back to Breskens on the south side of the Schelde, where the wind started to get up. We waited one day to see if it would abate (not a great hardship as I had some office work to do, and in any case the facilities and food at Breskens were absolutely first class), and at this stage my son David had to leave to return to work (nephew David having returned a week previously). It was then up to me to try and get the boat back to England. With the general forecast it seemed unlikely that I would be able to sail alone down the coast as the wind was roughly f5 and very much ‘on the nose’. I therefore decided that the only thing to do was to try to get back to Calais via the inland waterways. I therefore set off from Breskens along the Schelde to Terneuzen where the entrance to the inland waterways was, and had an exciting sail in a f6, admittedly in sheltered waters, until I came to Terneuzen and the first lock.

The passage through the inland waterways of Holland, Belgium and France was interesting in some ways, but not one I would like to repeat; certainly not solo. To begin with, the view was limited and monotonous as in such a small boat it was very seldom possible to see over the canal banks. Finding the way was very difficult as there were no signposts, and the charts I had of the inland waterways were not always very easy to follow.

The waterways I was on were mainly commercial. There were very few pleasure craft and the biggest trouble was to find petrol and/or somewhere to moor. In the whole of the journey from Terneuzen to Calais I only saw two waterside cafés where one could moor — a complete contrast to England with its waterside pubs. Through most of Belgium, not only was the scenery (such as it was) monotonous, but the canals were flanked by large industrial factories and buildings, and there was a lot of smoke and fumes and some revolting-looking discharges into the canals, the smell of which was dreadful in some areas. On the other hand I have to say that I was treated with great courtesy by all the barge captains, the lock keepers and the local clubs. Many of the largest locks I went through entirely by myself, including one which had a drop of about 60 ft, which gave me a feeling of vertigo and I could not look over the edge when it was empty. This one, interestingly enough, had floating bollards which kept level with the water and made it very easy to drop or rise that sort of distance.

The facilities in the clubs were not particularly good, but this was not unexpected as they were very much inland clubs. I was never charged for my moorings and I was, indeed, taken by car to a local restaurant in one case so that I did not get lost on the way.

For a short way in Belgium I went along a much quieter canal with some nice scenery, and the same was true about the last bit of canal from the French border into Calais. Otherwise, however, it was a hard slog and rather monotonous, the distance probably being at least twice the distance of going by sea. It took me from mid-day on Tuesday to mid-day on Saturday to complete the journey. I came across many different swing bridges, lifting bridges worked by radar (which seemed unable to detect me), various different sorts of locks, and even thick weed.

All the locks in Holland, Belgium and France were free. In Holland and Belgium there were no formalities at all; in France the lock-keeper wanted to know where one had come from and where one was going. Last year David had trouble with the Belgian Customs who went over the boat with a toothcomb when he was going through the canals, so I ‘did a Nelson’ to both the Belgian and French Douanes and had no trouble at all.

Eventually I made Calais where son David had driven out with the trailer to meet me, in view of the forecast of gale-force winds from the west for the next few days. The trailer was unfortunately not in a very good state of repair and needed two new cross-members made. David arranged, in his limited French, to have these made in Calais on a Saturday by the local Chamber of Commerce, who then refused to let us pay for them — a quite remarkable piece of generosity which I suspect would not have happened in England. By a piece of luck we managed to find a slipway in Calais, and then completed the repairs to the trailer and loaded the boat.

The final upset was about 10 miles from Dover when, at about 11 pm we again had a flat tyre on the trailer. We were fortunate enough to notice the telephone no. of a 24 hour tyre service in a public call box, and they came out to us and replaced the tyre, so we eventually got home at 3 am.

All in all, an interesting and adventurous trip. We used the sails probably more than we ever had before. We had no problems with anything and, as usual, the Drascombe Lugger performed impeccably. The most useful new items of equipment were an electric pump and an electric inflator used to inflate our rubber dinghy and, even more important, my lilo!