„Jolly Jumper“ the boats were often called in the legendary cartoons of Mike Peyton. It would have been a suitable name for Arielle too, as she jolly jumped over the waves on our ride over here from the Netherlands. With a nerve-racking noise every can or bottle was rattling and clattering in our storage lockers.

But thats‘s the second part of the story, which began quite comfortably. After a drizzly morning the sun came out and we had moderate winds from abeam, something every sailor hopes for. We were elated by sailing at something between 7 and 8 knots. 

Exactly as predicted the weather changed in the early morning the next day. We had to put up with rain and a stronger breeze straight on the nose and seas of more than 2 m. Motoring against these waves for the next 15 hours set Arielle bouncing and slowed her down to 3 kn. As the wind decreased a bit we hoisted sails again and tacked against the headwind for the rest of our trip. We made it to Newcastle arriving at the lock at 10:00 a.m. local time (11:00 bordtime) after 50 hous underway.

At the Royal Quays Marina we were greeted by a very friendly and supportive Marina team and soon after by two officers from the Border Force. Ahead of the start of our trip we had filled in an online form with our travel plans, our names and passport numbers and the name and MMSI Number of the boat, under which we can always be tracked. So it was no problem for the authorities to locate us, even though we had filled in Sunderland as port of our arrival. The formalities were settled smoothly and in a very polite manner 🇬🇧!