Eventually we were pushed & shoved out of danger and made a pretty good landing/berthing, and these amazing tugboat men pulled away. But I bet they had plenty of similar scary work to do afterwards. Calais is a bloody busy ferry port, and there were plenty more ferries besides ours due to dock during the rest of the day.

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Anyway, at Calais harbour entrance, the French tug Chambon Suroit turned up. These shots, btw, are all taken in the relatively sheltered, harbour mouth 'calmness', but sure enough, as soon as our captain slowed down the engines so as not to ram the quayside coming up, the (officially) severe gale force winds hit us full side on .... and started to push us towards the sea wall - stern first.

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Mrs Brit fighting to find her sea-legs.

All joking aside, here, we were crossing the English Channel from Dover to Calais on P&O's "Pride of Kent" ~ in an "officially" severe gale. This was shot just as we were leaving Dover harbour, btw. Once out in the channel .... don't even ask.

See Wikipedia "Pride of Kent" pic and all facts, figures, statistics, etc here. Built in 1992, she weighs 30,365 tonnes and is the current flagship of P&O's channel fleet.

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The brave tugboat captain & crew had to keep on revving, ramming, pushing, revving, ramming, pushing. And all this time they were in danger too.... and a hell of a lot lighter & smaller than we were. If she hadn't been able to hold and then push us away, she could easily have been crushed between our ship and the wall/quayside/rocks/whatever.

In conclusion:

I'm a good sailor myself but I really felt sorry for the half (at least) of our fellow passengers who were throwing up, fighting off heart attacks, saying prayers, confessing sins, writing wills, etc ~~ poor Mrs Old Brit among them. Awrh, God love her. She hates sailing. She hates flying. She hates motorways. She hates fast driving. Yet she puts up with it all ... just to please me. What a wonderful woman, eh? I wonder what she ever did to deserve me? Heh.

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As if the (officially severe) stormy English channel crossing (from Dover) wasn't scary enough, the Captain suddenly announced on the tannoy that he'd had to radio ahead for a tug to "assist" us. Because the winds were so strong he feared we'd be blown into the harbour walls or onto rocks while trying to dock @ Calais, France. ( As a ship slows down & loses power it's increasingly at the mercy of the wind & waves.)

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