Yesterday, at 11.00 AM after a quick final food shopping spree by me, we left Cowes and pointed Jennifer's nose towards Dover. It was nice to be back on the waves again but a little sad to see beautiful IOW disappear behind our stern, so much to see and so little time.
Early this morning, during my 3-6 AM watch together with Tore, we had an exciting encounter on open sea. A fast moving grey painted vessel with lots of antennas approached Jennifer from behind us with it's AIS (Automatic Identification System) switched off. Our location at the time was close to shore and Dungeness B, a nuclear power station (grid contribution: 1120 MW, start up in 1983). At 4.45 AM this grim looking vessel pulled up next to us. I asked Tore to alert our sleeping captain Lasse.
After a few minutes we could see a text in black on the side of the vessel, "UK Border Force". A sound signal was given and Lasse replied by making contact via VHS radio. A Border Force gentleman then asked him about our past and future destinations, number of people onboard and their nationalities. Lasse explained that he is the owner of Jennifer and that she sailed in the Caribbean in 2016, in the Mediterranean 2017 & 2018 and that our final destination now is Stockholm, Sweden.
The answers given to the Border Force people by Lasse was apparently satisfactory enough and they could conclude that we had no intention to harm Dungeness B in any way.
Wow, Spännande.
ReplyDelete