Tuesday 31st March: Joss Bay - St.Margaret's at Cliffe (15 n.mi.)

Rose to my alarm at 0500 to catch the tide. As porridge simmered on the stove, the red disc of the sun rose to the east, and the merchant ships riding to anchor offshore one-by-one extinguished their deck lights. Filed the daily trip report with Dover Coastguard on the VHF, and then negotiated with Ramsgate Port Control for a safe crossing of their harbour entrance. I've heard that, to yachtsmen, kayaks are "speed bumps", but to a cross-channel ferry we probably qualify only as "road kill". It was most heartening to see the compass creep past 180 - it feels as though forward progress has now started. Paddled to Deal on a bearing, and enjoyed the start of the famous white cliffs. At 1320 I arrived at St.Margarets, and promptly fell out of the boat most inelegantly, right in front of the coastguard watch officer who had taken my call earlier. He had walked down to the bay in his lunch hour, and we had a pleasant chat about the vagaries of the tidal streams hereabouts.
As I tidied the boat up, a small dinghy pottered about in the bay. It came ashore and I lent a hand to get it up the steep beach, learning, to my utter astonishment, that its agile helmsman was 80 years old. Jim, if you're reading this, thanks for the photo:
Enjoyed an excellent, if rather extravagant, lunch at The Coastguard, but was mistakenly told that the campsite at GR 356443 would take a tent. Ended up back at the beach, having trollied the boat up the hairpin bends and back again.
Performed the evening routine of working out tides and planning the route for tomorrow. Sleep disturbed by cars (this seems to be a local late-night trysting spot) - the bad business at Sheerness has had an effect on me: I wake at the slightest noise, and I'm loth to camp near large settlements. Seeking isolation in this way also makes it hard to keep the blog updated, especially since the technology for doing so remotely got destroyed by salt water (again thanks to the Sheerness incident).