Rowena in Deauville and Utah Beach

We had a lovely time in St Vaast, we went on a bike ride along a sandy track by the beach to Utah beach and a war memorial.

The next day we left St Vaast and headed for Deauville, we got there too early for the lock so anchored in the bay, went for a swim around Rowena and ended up with a scrubbing brush in hand and had to scrub the waterline!

Deauville was lovely, so hot, we were sitting out up top on Rowena at 10.30pm with no need for any jumpers on!

We left Deauville at 9am on Sunday for our channel crossing. We rang the coastguard to let him know and he asked if we had heard the forecast and that there was a force 8-9 forecast later! We decided that we had plenty of time to cross before it came in and set off. It was very calm, we got to the shipping lanes and the fog came down! We could see the ships on AIS but not out of the window! Very scary. Then the coastguard called us up Rowena, Rowena this is Solent Coastguard, we didn't half jump, he wanted to know just where we were and how long until we got to Brighton! We told him an hour and half, by then we were even more worried, even though there was absolutely no wind, the calm before the storm we thought. We got into Brighton at 8pm, (12 hours it took) in pouring rain. The storm arrived at 1am and its been so bad we are really glad we did not get caught in it.