We had been in England for just two weeks, enjoying fine beer, authentic fish and chips, stunning cliffs and, oh yes, a ton of wind by which to sail. But Karen and I had our hearts set on the Baltic Sea this summer, and if we dawdled too long, our goals might just slip away. At 6:30am, we were off and away from the dock at Ramsgate, needing a full day to make the 65 miles back across the English Channel to Belgium. As the busiest shipping corridor in the world, our wits would once again have to be with us. In many ways, this would be more difficult than our earlier channel crossing from Guernsey to Weymouth. Here, the channel was not only more compressed, but the waters were pockmarked throughout with shoals, particularly on the Belgium side. The chart didn’t help much either. It was criss-crossed with shipping lanes and odd shaped purple separation zones. The majority of ships were following the dominant northeast/southwest routes, but a handful of ships were transiting east/west from and to the busy Belgium ports of Zeebrugge and Antwerp. In the center of it all was a counterclockwise roundabout of sorts, just like traffic circles on land except each ‘car’ here was measuring in at 600-1200 feet long.
