The Strait of Dover looked still and inviting, a picture of calm. It was an illusion, I realise now, as our catamaran barrels over eight-foot waves and skipper Andrew Simons fetches the sick bucket.
I heed his advice, training my eyes on one of P&O’s belching behemoths as it heaves towards Calais under a sky crisscrossed with plane contrails. Our sailboat feels like a quiet rebellion, a rebuff to the fast pace of modern life. This is slow travel, an immersive experience dictated by wind speeds, tide times and weather.
The catamaran plying the waters of the Channel (Photo: SailLink)However, the mohawked entrepreneur has spent the past five years navigating “rolls of red tape” to launch this low-carbon alternative to existing cross-Channel ferries. Finally, it’s a reality.
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For now, though, SailLink operates only between Dover and Boulogne-Sur-Mer, a journey that takes around four hours with a fair wind.
As for passport control, that’s a breeze: border guards, no doubt grateful to be out of the office, checked our particulars on the boat. We didn’t even need to leave our seats.
Like the tide, the conversation turns onboard. “We’re in the shipping lane now,” shouts Simons, who scans the horizon, keeping an eye on the island-sized cargo ships in the distance. The Strait of Dover is the world’s busiest shipping lane, with more than 500 vessels chugging through it daily. Simons and his crew must pick a way through.
Cassandra Verhegge, is a French crew member (Photo: Sameer Al-Doumy/AFP/Getty)
“We like to support things that don’t create carbon,” says White, a gardener. It wasn’t just SailLink’s low-carbon credentials that attracted her to the service, though. “It’s the sense of adventure,” she adds, as waves splash the deck. “We live safe lives most of the time, there’s an element of risk out here.”
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Read MoreJoining me is John Fleming from Cambridge, the only other passenger on today’s crossing. A keen sailor, Fleming hopes to buy a catamaran for his retirement and wanted to see how this one handled.
One by one, we’re invited to take the helm. I’ve never sailed before but Howard gives me a crash course, telling me to focus on a landmark and keep the wheel pointing towards it. Easier said than done. I find myself losing my marker, forcing Simons to step in. “Keep a steady course,” he says. Righto, capt’n.
“It’s not easy being green, is it,” I offer, sympathetically. “No,” he says, managing a smile. “I feel pretty green, though.”
In the era of post-Brexit border friction, SailLink’s service feels like a quaint back door into Europe. There are no queues, no scanners, no paranoid security infrastructure. Just a man on a pontoon overdue his afternoon aperitif.
SailLink offers one-way tickets from Dover to Boulogne from £75, plus an extra £10 to take a bike. See the summer timetable here
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Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( I took the new eco-friendly Dover-Boulogne ferry – it has its own passport control )
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