Wednesday 1st April: St.Margarets - Dungeness (20 n.mi.)

Another 0500 start, to catch the tide. Wind NE 3-4, building a bit during the day. Fair. Good.
Negotiated with Dover Port Control (VHF is essential here), and likewise with Folkestone. Filed trip report with Dover CG, but when I tried to get the weather from them (St.Margarets being in a radio shadow) the tips of my pencils broke. I keep finding more exasperating consequences of the bad business at Sheerness. Over a period of time, one fine-tunes all the kit for a trip like this, but now I find that I've not replaced the knife I usually keep in my buoyancy aid pocket, and that the lanyards on the chinagraph pencils of my (replacement) A4 "chart table" are too short.
Paddled from Folkestone to Dungeness on a bearing, passing to seaward of the Hythe range, which was firing. I wonder whether gunners' dreams are punctuated with slamming doors and clumsy warehousemen dropping heavy parcels...
The increased fetch as I neared Dungeness meant that the seas had built to between 1 and 1.5m, so at high water (henceforth: "HW"), there was danger of dumping surf on the steep shingle bank. I aimed for some people on the beach, thinking that they might warn me of any unseen submerged hazards. They helped carry the (very heavy) boat up the beach and welcomed me into their home, already bursting with visiting relatives and neighbours' children, making tea and feeding me, offering showers and laundry facilities. We discovered much in common: Keith, a former lifeboatman, is an artist and a learned lover of contemporary music (but with taste eclectic enough to encompass Fairfax and Sturton!); son Orton is researching cold water corals, so we were able to chat about the life of academic research. Nothing was too much trouble for this family, and they helped restore my battered faith in human nature.
All along the Kent and Channel coasts, we see evidence of military activity from the Napoleonic period and two world wars. PLUTO came ashore near here.