If the skipper calls off your Ramsgate fishing trip because the wind or the sea makes it unsafe, you get back everything you paid through Reelzy, or you move the trip to another day at no extra cost. You pick which. The call is the skipper’s, it is usually made the evening before or on the pontoon first thing, and it is based on the Met Office inshore forecast for the stretch of coast the boat works. One thing to get right: if the skipper asks you to cancel because of the weather, do not press cancel in your booking yourself. Message Reelzy support first, so the deposit is protected.
The rest of this guide is the detail behind that: who is allowed to decide, what they look at, why there is no magic wind number, and how to plan a Kent trip so a blown-out morning does not cost you the day.
Why a weather call is not the same as you cancelling
Every listing on Reelzy carries a cancellation policy, flexible, moderate or strict, and those deadlines only bite when the guest changes their mind. A trip the captain cancels for safety sits outside them. Our cancellation policies say it plainly: in unsafe weather, at the captain’s discretion, the guest gets a full refund of everything paid, or can reschedule at no additional cost.
The trap is the friendly text from the skipper on a Friday night saying “might be best to cancel, mate, it’s going to blow tomorrow”. If you then cancel the booking yourself, the system sees a guest cancellation inside the deadline, and on a moderate or strict policy that can cost you the deposit. So reply to the skipper, then tell us in the support chat that the trip is off for weather. We mark it as the captain’s call and the refund or the new date goes through on those terms.
Who decides, and on what basis
The skipper decides, and that is not a courtesy. UK charter angling boats work under the small commercial vessel code, MGN 280, published by the Maritime and Coastguard Agency. It defines favourable weather as wind, sea and visibility that the skipper judges safe for that boat within its limits, with due regard to the official forecasts for its area. Boats coded for the shorter-range categories may only go out in favourable weather and in daylight, and a boat’s certificate can restrict it further than that.
You can read the MGN 280 code yourself, and you will notice what is missing: there is no single wind speed in it that cancels every trip. A force 5 from one direction can be a lumpy but fishable day close in, the same force from another can make the harbour mouth dangerous. The limit is set by the boat, the area it is coded for, the direction of the wind against the tide and the skipper’s experience. That is why two Ramsgate boats sometimes make different calls on the same morning, and why neither of them is wrong.
What you should not do is try to talk a skipper round. If they say no, the sea has already decided.
The forecast a Ramsgate skipper actually reads
Most skippers on the Kent coast will have three or four apps open, but the reference is the Met Office inshore waters forecast. It splits the UK coast into areas, and Ramsgate falls in North Foreland to Selsey Bill (Margate, just round the corner, is in the area to the north, Gibraltar Point to North Foreland). It is issued four times a day, at 00:00, 06:00, 12:00 and 18:00 UTC, and covers the next 24 hours with an outlook for the 24 after that: wind direction and force, sea state, weather and visibility.
It is worth reading it yourself the day before. You will learn more from it than from a general weather app, because it talks about the sea rather than the beach. If the evening forecast says the wind is easing through the night, the skipper may still want to see the sea at first light before deciding. If it says the wind is rising through the day, the trip might go out early and come back early.
Ramsgate faces east and south-east, out towards the Goodwin Sands and the Dover Strait. That matters, because how much shelter the boat gets depends on where the wind comes from, and the southern North Sea is shallow enough to stand up quickly when wind runs against tide. Ask your skipper which directions are worst for their boat. It is a better question than “how windy is too windy”.
What you will usually hear, and when
There are two moments when the call tends to be made. The first is the afternoon or evening before, once the 18:00 forecast is out: if it is clearly blowing, a good skipper messages you then rather than letting you drive down from London for nothing. The second is on the morning itself, when the forecast is borderline. You may be asked to be at the marina on time and wait half an hour, or told the plan has changed to fishing closer in.
A shorter or changed trip is not a cancellation. If you accept going out for a shorter session closer to shore, you have taken the trip. If you would rather keep the full plan on another day, say so before you leave the pontoon, not halfway through the morning.
Tides rarely cause the cancellation at Ramsgate, which is a nice thing about fishing from the Royal Harbour marina. Hussler, a 26 foot charter boat run by Skipper Bob, boards from the pontoon and can leave and return at any state of the tide, so the timing of your trip depends on the weather and the fishing, not on whether there is water in the harbour.
Planning a Kent trip around the weather
Autumn and winter are when the weather calls come most often, and they are also when the cod and whiting fishing is at its best. If you are coming to Thanet in that window, plan for it.
Book the trip early in your stay, not on the last morning. A first-day booking leaves you room to move it if the skipper calls it off. If you only have one day, a half-day or 4 hour trip is easier to fit around a weather window than a full day, and the boats in Ramsgate offer both.
Keep the reschedule in mind as you book. Agree with the skipper, in the Reelzy chat, which other days would work for you, so a new date can be set in one message rather than a week of back and forth. Groups should agree on a back-up date before they travel: a stag do or a work trip that only has one Saturday is the one most likely to lose its day. Our guide to group fishing trips from Ramsgate goes into the logistics for bigger parties.
If it is your first time out, read what to expect on a first sea fishing trip from Ramsgate. A day the skipper judges fishable can still be lively in a 26 foot boat, and seasickness tablets taken the night before and again in the morning make a real difference.
Questions worth asking before you pay
Use the chat on the listing before you book and ask the skipper how they handle weather. A good skipper answers this in one message. Ask how far ahead they normally make the call, which wind directions are the problem for their boat, whether they would rather move a trip or shorten it, and how they will reach you on the morning. If they answer those four clearly, you will not be standing on a cold pontoon at 6 in the morning wondering whether you are going out.
Every boat we list on the Kent coast is on our Ramsgate charters page, and the wider UK sea fishing charters page covers the rest of the country. If you are after a quieter day with the family, Lady Ann supplies the bait and tackle and prepares your catch for the table before you step off, and the winter cod fishing page shows which boats target cod when the season turns.
Pick a boat, message the skipper about the weather and your back-up days, and book the first good day of your trip. If the wind wins, you lose a morning, not your money.
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