The boats in the neighbouring basin are on the bottom of a dried-up pool! Talk about tides

50° 57′ 4.645” N 1° 51′ 31.2696” E

July 14. – 2013

The sun shines. It will be a wonderful day. Calais is waiting.

After a few hours at the computer, where Per seeks to resolve a domestic problem at the newspaper, we explore the city. The boats in the neighbouring basin are located on the bottom of the dried-up pool! All the water is gone! Talk about tides.

We see the town hall, which was built in the English style. Calais was for many years in British hands. We rediscover the difference between a boulangerie, patisserie and boucherie. We visit a museum about World War II furnished in a huge German bunker built in the city’s most beautiful park. The bunker has 20 exhibition-rooms with pictures, props and newspaper clippings from the war. An old-fashioned museum concept yet thoughtful because of the subject and the horrific images.

Later, we are on the beach, where the French are getting ready to celebrate the fourteenth of July. It is teeming with bathers, with ice cream parlours, beach toys and promenading Frenchmen. It’s all to get in the holiday mood.

It’s still a little hard with the French. Kirsten’s first order in a cafe was for two coffees – “an espresso and an americano, thank you.” The waiter nods as a sign, that he understands the order and returns with an espresso and a bitter, pink drink called an americano.

During the day we decide to go to sea. We can come in and sail on the canals in time. If we continue along the English Channel and sail up the Seine, there are almost five hundred kilometres to Paris and only six locks. If we go into the channels here from Calais it is 450 km and 36 locks. We choose freedom of the sea. Even if we have to steer by hand all the way if we do not get the chart plotter repaired with its correspondence with the autopilot.

The plan is: Up at 6:30. Out through the port gate for 07:17. And after Kirsten’s increasingly authoritative calculations catch the southbound tidal current at 07:57.