Tuesday 26th January finds Severomorsk off the coast of Norway heading due south west. the tranquil cruise at 21 knots puts us right into British EEZ waters at 1015.
Heading into the North Sea there’s not much to report its pretty barren calm cold and clear sea state 2, the odd fishing trawler and the occasional aircraft pass by.
Over night we maintain a due south course at 21 knots and run down the coast of the UK.
At 1105 we are met by the British type 23 frigate HMS Richmond which will shadow us through the English Channel.
As we near the straight traffic increases and we reduce speed to just 12 knots, maintaining this speed through the straight until we exit.
There are two lanes in the dover straight the British side is West to East and the French side East to West, naturally we are in the West bound lane.
In front of us is a car carrier behind us is a container ship the type 23 keeps close by our port side matching our speed.
at 1217 we are fully committed to transiting the straight, running north to south are the ferries crossing between dover to Calais and Dunkirk there are also fishing vessels dotted around, this makes for a very arduous transit as we have to keep all eyes on the water.
1345 we exit the straight and finally pick up more speed to 21 knots again, we had already signaled the type 23 which promptly follows suit.
Severomorsk is now heading for the Western Approaches and the Bay of Biscay.
