2018 Summer Cruise days 10 to 13 - anchor adventure

With the fine weather set to continue, we decided on Monday to make the short hop from St Peter Port to the anchorage off Rosiere Steps in Herm.

It's such a short hop that there seemed little point in putting the sails up only to put them away again twenty minutes later so we bimbled over under motor.

It's an excellent anchorage in a Nor'easterly and unfortunately a lot of other people had read the same page of the pilot book so it was fairly chocker.

We anchored securely in the outer anchorage which was reasonable but affected by the wash of the Guernsey to Herm ferry, every motor boat using the Percee Pass (a narrow channel between Herm and Jethou) and a regular procession of RIBs in and out of the landing.



By the following morning we'd had enough of the wash and decided to skedaddle over to Sark. It would have been nice to get ashore at Herm but maybe we can have another crack later in the holiday.

Once again, it wasn't worth faffing about with the sails so we motored it. The girls are having a lovely time in the sunshine but they ain't too keen on working the deck when the boat is bouncing around and it was a fairly brisk day breeze wise. So I'm being Mr. Easygoing Skipper and not Captain Bligh!

We were trying for one of the half a dozen or so visitor mooring buoys in Havre Gosselin. There was just one free as we approached and then, much to our disgust, a yacht nipped through the Gouliet Passage between Sark and Brecqhuo and grabbed it from under our noses!

Oh well, plan B! We nipped around the shoals and rocks into the next bay and anchored in splendid isolation at the opposite end to everybody else.



It is a fabulous anchorage (provided the wind is in the North or East, I'd imagine it would become untenable in any sort of Sou'westerly). Looking one way you're virtually under the cliffs, look the other and it's open sea as far as the eye can see. Even with that North Easterly rising F5 gusting F6, there was very little wave action and not much swell.

On Wednesday we decided it was time to adventure ashore. We'd inflated the side tubes of our borrowed roundtail dinghy and put the floors in before leaving St Peter Port and carried it on deck between the main mast and the baby stay so all that we had to do was inflate the bow chamber and launch it.

I decided to use the bigger outboard, borrowed from Tony for the duration of the cruise, as our handy little 2 stroke is playing up a bit. The drawback of that plan is that the 3.5hp four stroke is really a bit heavy but it was usable and reliable.

We got ashore rather later than would have been ideal, failed to make a note of the time and the state of the tide, and ran out of enthusiasm for carrying the dinghy up the beach about half way between the water and the cliffs! Securing the painter to a convenient rock, we eyed up the daunting climb ahead of us...



We didn't count the rough steps that kindly volunteers have hewn out of the cliff face but it's about 80m up to La Coupee. Knackering and ever so slightly scary!

It's worth it when you get there though, the view is spectacular...



We set off down the track used by the horse drawn carts and tractors, there are no cars on Sark, to find the very useful shop. We only needed bread, eggs and milk but the ice creams were too tempting to ignore!

By now I was getting twitchy about the tide. Low water had come and gone and with every passing minute the water would be getting closer to the dinghy. So we cut and ran (well, walked briskly anyway) back to La Coupee. When we got there, the dinghy was still high and dry and we probably had two hours at least in hand.

We crossed the narrow road built by German PoWs in 1945 to get a picture of Pagan from on high...





... and then gingerly made our way back down the cliff. We spent a while resting and Maire and I went for a plodge in the sea. Plodging is what we called paddling in Sunderland when I were a lad. The cool water was bliss on overheated feet.

We relaunched the dinghy without any difficulty and set off back towards Pagan. A wee bit of a chop had got up and Jane, who insists on sitting in rather than on a dinghy, copped a few splashes but otherwise it was uneventful.

Back on board we enjoyed a fry up for tea.

Then I checked the weather for the next few days and pondered upon plans over the coming weekend. The forecast suggested the Nor'easterly would continue until Sunday or Monday rising from F4 gusting 5 or occasionally 6 to F5/6 gusting 7 to 8.

That didn't sound very conducive to a comfortable life at anchor! So a marina it would have to be, and sooner rather than later to beat the rush of like minded sailors. There's only two to choose from and our preferred option of Beaucettte is not recommended in strong Nor'easterlies.

I rang the harbour master at Beaucettte for advise and the advise was, as I rather anticipated, not to try it until at least Sunday as the entrance was too rough.

So it was on with the motor, up with the anchor and back to St Peter Port. This time I toyed privately with the notion of getting some sail up mainly to steady the boat as we were heading across the wind and waves. In the end, I didn't bother once again.

We were soon alongside the waiting pontoon in the outer harbour. Then when the tide was high enough early in the evening we were led in to a berth in Victoria Marina where we'll remain now until Sunday or possibly Monday.



Plans for next week are fluid at the moment. The wind should go round more into the West and ease up a bit which makes Alderney a possibility but we have to be in St Helier, in Jersey, by next Saturday night so a forty mile round trip in the wrong direction might not appeal. We shall see what the weather does over the next few days and go from there

2018 Summer Cruise days 8 & 9 (St Peter Port)

 Saturday was crew change day.  Rik's wife Michelle arrived on the ferry at lunchtime and his friend Peter, a Guernseyman, picked us all up and took us for lunch before dropping Tony and myself at the airport.

Tony had a flight to catch home and I had my next crew to meet. Jane and my cousin Maire arrived on time and we took a taxi back to St Peter Port (more expensive than the bus but easier)

Once the girls had settled themselves on board, we went out for a meal at The Crows Nest. Good and not excessively pricey.

After a long day traveling, both the girls were ready for an early night. I went for a late evening walk as I was still a bit stiff after the exertions of the long passage through the night.

Yesterday, we had a leisurely start time the day finally getting ourselves moving late morning. We visited Castle Corner which passed the afternoon most agreeably.

On our return to the boat, Jane and Maire went in search of fresh food and returned with some very good burgers and salad.

The weather was very hot and sunny and it seems set to stay that way for a while.  We've already moved on to the next phase of our cruise of which more anon

PS. Sorry about the lack of photos. For some reason I didn't get around to taking any!

2018 Summer Cruise days 6 through 7

Our decision not to move on on Wednesday was fully vindicated as several yachts arrived during the day reporting on conditions as bad, if not worse, than the previous evening.

Happily, today (Thursday) promised at least a fighting chance of making an overnight passage direct from Eastbourne to Guernsey.

There was no pressing need to make an early start, in fact it made sense to leave at around 9:00am as it optimised the tides overall if we averaged 5 knots and would put us into the approaches to St. Peter Port in Guernsey in daylight on any average speed between 4 knots and 6 knots.

We set out expecting the wind to have backed into the North West or even North but it was stubbornly staying in the West. Even so, we managed to get hard on the wind and sail from shortly after leaving Sovereign Harbour, past Beachy Head and down as far as the end of the Dover Straits Traffic Seperation Scheme.

Frustratingly, just as we approached the almost continuous stream of ships heading West, the wind headed us (or perhaps we sailed into a more South Westerly stream of air) and we had to start the engine again.

Having expected to be on a reach all the way to just past Alderney, once again we were motoring into the teeth of the wind. Beating to windward was not a viable option realistically. We had neither the time, nor to be honest, the inclination and tacking backwards and forwards across the path of dozens of ships steaming at anything from 9 knots to 18 knots would have been, frankly, stupid.

We did debate tacking North towards the Isle of Wight and then back on long boards but I did a quick calculation of how much time it would cost us and didn't fancy the result one little bit!

So we sidled across the West bound traffic without too much difficulty. Whilat doing fuel checks as we motored along what felt like the central reservation of a motorway with ships going past us travelling West to our North and ships going East to our South, we suddenly realised that the forecast backing of the wind had finally arrived and we had enough angle on it to get sailing.

So it was off with the engine again and back under full sail just before 21:00UT (10:00pm British Summer Time).. We set a decent pace along the next leg into the darkening night. The moon was up and bright, it wasn't too chilly (although we all felt the need for extra layers) and with us nicely set up I left Tony and Rik to it and went below for an hour or two's nap to recharge my batteries.

I doxed fitfully, getting some benefit, but every time I was on the verge of dropping off, the bloody French issued another DSC "All Ships" alert which set the alarm off on the VHF radio. It's not an alarm that can be ignored as it could be a Pan Pan or a Mayday that we ought to respond to. Why the French issue an "All Ships" alert for routine safety information broadcasts I do not know but I wish they'd stop it! I won't run without the VHF on and the alarms enabled for safety reasons. Hey ho.

I felt slightly refreshed when I came back on deck and rather pleased to see that Tony and Rik had Pagan sailing very nicely indeed at over 7 knots. Rik went below to grab some rest whilst Tony and I tried to figure out how to get across the continuous stream of Eastbound shipping between us and the French coast.

Pagan's AIS receiver will reliably pick up ships out to 30 to 40 miles and usually picks up the bigger ships, and slightly intermittently the smaller ones too, out to beyond 50 miles. With the display set to the 48 mile range, we were staring at a virtually continuous stream of ships with no obvious gaps we could dive through.

After an hour and a half of "not a chance", we spotted a gap. It wasn't much of a gap and it would mean passing the stern of one vessel and turning due South with a big container ship heading straight for us at over 18 knots. Our CPA (closest point of approach) would be barely 2 miles which is not a comfortable safety margin but we were being held well North of where we needed to be and getting, if not desperate, certainly keen to get back on track.

Discretion being the better part of valour, we fired up the engine and put the pedal to the metal. At one point, we were doing over 8 knots over the ground! Once we were clear of the shipping, we were able to lay the course for the Casquets and turn the engine off again.

We watched the sun rise, always a fantastic sight at sea, and then Rik came back on watch and Tony went below. With a fair old swell coming in on our beam, steering was a constant challenge (the wheelpilot isn't really man enough to handle those conditions under sail and in any case we didn't want to be running the batteries down all night) but we got to grips with it with practice.

Tony only managed an hour or so, but at least he did actually get to sleep. I then took another two hour break and this time did manage to get some actual sleep. I was pleased about that as I really didn't want to be struggling to keep my eyes open once we got in amongst the rock strewn and tidally challenging waters of the Channel Islands.

Approach the Casquets in a rolly polly beam on swell

I'd decided long before we set off not to attempt to take a short cut down the Swinge (the passage between Alderney and Burhou. The tides can run very strongly through there and in race conditions the passage can be very dangerous. As there was no way of knowing in advance what time we'd enter the channel, nor of predicting the sea state, I considered it wise to go a few extra miles and go around the outside of the Casquets.

It turned out we should have gone a bit further outside of the Casquets than we did as there were some rather interesting sea conditions. There were no overfalls or other warnings on the Navionics chart, nothing, in fact, to make me think that clearing the rocks by half a mile would be problematic.

However, had I looked (as I usually do but unaccountably failed to do on this occasion) at the Admiralty chart, I would have seen that my route passed over a shallow 14.6 meter round topped rock with "Violent Eddies" marked on the chart all around. Happily, they weren't too violent but they were rather interesting to helm through! No harm done but a lesson learnt (or I should say re-learnt and reinforced)

The Navionics chart with our course plotted

The Admiralty chart wth our actual track plotted

The difference is obvious!

Anyway, after that bit of excitement, we now found ourselves running dead before the wind with a quartering sea. That is a recipe for slow and frustrating sailing and with the tide due to turn foul in the channel down to St. Peter Port in less than 3 hours none of us fancied slogging all afternoon to get into port. So it was back on with the noise machine for the final leg.

I confess I struggled to relate what I could see on the charts, both Navionics and Admiraly, in the approaches to St. Peter Port. With all the rocks covered, the vista in front of me bore no obvious relation to the picture my mind formed from the charts. This was a little disconcerting as normally my mental image from a map or chart is a very good fit with what I can see in the real world.

I got my eyes and brain back in sync farily quickly once a couple of obvious landmarks had been identified and added to the mental data and we made our way into the harbour with the 'Q' flag flying.

We milled about for a bit then spotted the waiting pontoon and went alongside. Seconds later, the harbour dory whizzed up and guided us in to a berth in Victoria Marina. All that remained to be done was to fill out the customs clearance form, which required listing all the wine, spirits and tobacco on board (no mean task on Pagan!), and posting it in the box at the head of the access ramp.

Then the 'Q' flag could come down and, after a swift visit to the local chandlery to purchase one (I hadn't been able to get one before we left as our local chandlery doesn't stock them and I forgot to order one online), the Guernsey courtesy flag hoisted in it's place.

Alongside in St. Peter Port

Then it was off to the nearest pub for the traditional end of passage pint. A second followed the first to keep it company by which time we all felt that more beer would be a bad mistake! Back to the boat we staggered, all of about 100 yards, for coffee and a rest before we went ashore again for a Thai curry. It may be hard to believe but we all had a coke to drink with our food and then returned to the boat without partaking of any more booze. Rik baled first but Tony and I weren't far behind and the entire crew was away with the fairies by not much after nine!

We'd covered 147 nautical miles in 28 hours and 25 minutes at an average speed of just under 5.2 knots arriving within half an hour of our ETA! 78.5 miles, slightly more than half of the passage, was done under sail which, in the conditions and considering the time contraints, wasn't too shabby.

Thursday 21 June 2018 - Passage Plan

Departing Sovereign Harbour (Eastbourne) 08:00UT towards St. Peter Port, Guernsey eta 12:00UT 22 Jun (tomorrow, Friday). (Latest 21:00UT 22 Jun)

Alternates :- Cherbourg, Braye Hbr (Alderney), Beaucette Marina (Guernsey) or reverse course to nearest convenient UK South Coast port

Weather: Northerly winds, variable strength, expecting F4 or 5 with gusts to 6 to begin with and a sea state of up to 1m. Forecasts indicate wind will moderate and the sea state reduce as throughout the day and into the night.

2018 Summer Cruise days 4 & 5

Tony and I awoke to our alarms first thing Tuesday morning and promptly decided we had not had enough sleep and recovery time to get underway. We knew that it was going to be a tough day bashing straight into the wind and sea and we were not in a fit state to tackle it.

(We didn't prepare ourselves very well the day before, too much time waffling about, too long in the bar - albeit we didn't over-do the beer, and too late to bed)

So we decided to get a few more hours rest and look at departing when the tidal gate opened around 1:00pm that afternoon.

We felt much brighter when we awoke for the second time and the forecast offered the prospect of a possible improvement in conditions. So we decided to depart Dover and aim to go straight through if possible but divert into Eastbourne or Cherbourg if it wasn't on.

We were underway at 12:42UT (1:42pm local time) and at 23:51UT (ten to one the following morning) we were alongside in Sovereign Harbour, Eastbourne.

The conditions did not improve at all. If anything, they got worse. The problem wasn't the wind, which never rose above a stiff breeze, it was the sea conditions. Pagan made better progress this year than she did in precisely the same circumstances last year but it was really hard work on the crew. Even sitting still was physically demanding as the boat was being thrown around in a random fashion with no pattern to it.

By the time we reached Dungeness, in the fog, we had had enough and we laid the course for Sovereign Harbour with the plan to have at least a 6 or 8 hour layover before moving on.

The late evening weather forecast suggested conditions would be no better today (Wednesday) and once we were alongside and I fired up the laptop to look at the various weather sources I like to compare, it was clear that there would be no improvement until tomorrow (Thursday).

So the decision was promptly made to have (another!) rest day in port and make plans for Thursday onwards. The wind goes Northerly in the morning but kicks up for a spell before conditions are forecast to improve. So provisionally we're looking at a mid-afternoon exit from Sovereign Harbour and aim to go through the night arriving in St. Peter Port sometime between Friday afternoon and Saturday morning.

Meanwhile, we had a problem last night with the built in rechargable batteries on the solar powered Tacktick instrument heads going flat in a matter of hours. I can live without the wind but if the master head powered down we lose the depth sounder (crap design but there you go). So today we've rigged up a means of recharging, and if necessary powering, one of the heads off the boat 12v supply.

And we've tidied the boat, sorted out our gear and made things all shipshape again!

Here's our track, 100% motoring at (mostly) 2,400rpm ...

We covered 47.2 miles in 11 hours 53 minutes at an average speed of just under 4 knots which indicates how crap the conditions were since at those revs in flat water Pagan would be doing close to 7 knots. On the up side, we used about 30 litres of diesel (about 2.5l an hour) which is a significant improvement over the amount we burnt last year on the same leg. I'm getting an understanding of the most efficient revs on the engine in Pagan and there seems to be (unsurprisingly) a drastic increase in fuel consumption for relatively little benefit in speed over the ground once you push the revs much above 2,500 (from memory, I think we were running at about 2,700 to 2,900 last year)

Now the debate appears to be where to eat and drink tonight!

Tuesday 19 June 2018 - Passage Plan

Departing Dover imminently towards St. Peter Port, Guernsey eta 10:00UT Thursday approx

Alternates :- Sovereign Harbour (Eastbourne), Cherbourg

Weather: WSW F4 gusting 5 occ., sea state slight. Vis reasonable but risk of fog patches (we have radar and AIS). Anticipate weather improving and wind shift to our advantage later in passage

2018 Summer Cruise days 1, 2 & 3

Rik and Tony having arrived quite late on Friday evening, Saturday was spent, as planned, getting ready to go.

Kit was sorted out, a final shopping run made and all was ready by late afternoon.

I had planned for the possibility of the weather being too brisk to make anchoring downriver an attractive proposition and that was indeed the case. So we ate and had a few beers on board before retiring for an all too brief sleep.

We needed to make an early start to make the best of the tides so it was up, up and away at the ungodly hour of 4.00am. There was astonishing little wind given the forecast so we motored downriver, putting the sails up on the way. As we approached the entrance to the River Roach, the breeze finaly picked up enough to stop the noise machine.

With the tide helping us along, we wetre making a good 5 knots over the ground and as we cleared the land and got out into the Whitaker Channel the wind picked up and so did our speed.

We covered the 25 miles to the South West Sunk crossing in just over 4 hours. With the engine idling in neutral as a precsaution, we felt our way through the as yet unnamed gat through the sands and, if anything, I'd say it's deeper than it was last year.

We kept the engine idling as we crossed the Black Deep as there was a small feeder container ship coming up the channel on a collision course. As a sailing vessel (with caveats that didn't apply in this case) we were the stand on vessel but he showed no signs of altering course. If anything he was edging further to starboard and reducing our predicted CPA (closest point of approach).

I had a sneaky feeling he was shaping up to pass down Fisherman's Gat to I tried to call him on the VHF with no response. I executed a DSC call which, after a delay, was acknowledged but still no communication. As I'd guessed, he did indeed turn into the gat and we breathed again and stopped the engine, which had never been in gear.

By now, it was getting a bit too exciting for full sail although we were hitting over 7.5 knots at times.

I'd decided based on experience gained that the next time I needed to reef Pagan down, I'd drop the mizzen to see if that improved the balance of the reefed sail plain. With the first reef in the main, a moderate amount of genoa rolled away and the mizzen stowed she was much better behaved.

We had an excellent sail down to the North Foreland and on past Ramsgate. We put in a tack into the outer reached of Pegwell Bay to avoid an oncoming fishing boat and on the next "good" tack the wind started to head us and our speed began to drop off.

With only 10 miles to go to Dover and the conditions becoming tiring on top of a short night's sleep, I made the pragmatic decision to get the engine on and burn a bit of diesel to get into Dover sooner rather than later. It turned out to be a very fortunate decision.

Within an hour of making that call, the wind got up and, significantly, so did the sea state. Our speed over the ground bombed from around 5 knots to, at times, less than a knot and even with the revs piled on we were struggling to maintain 2 knots over the ground and that was with a supposedly fair tide. We had two hours before the tide would turn foul and I began to worry about not making it in time and even possibly being forced to turn tail and run back to Ramsgate.

Our cause was not helped by a yacht apparently tacking towards Dover in front of us. We eased off to let him pass ahead of us and then he prompty "tacked" and came back out again. We had to drop the engine speed to idle which, when the track data is examined, at least explains our lack of progress. With the engine idling we were going backwards at over 3 knots!

I was harbouring suspicions about the yacht in question and sure enough I spotted the give away evidence that he was actually motor sailing - there was copious quantites of water being ejected from his wet exhaust!

Blow me though if he didn't then "tack" back and aim back across our bows on a collision course so precise it could have been calculated. By now, he had barely a handkerchief of genoa showing and a scrap of mainsail. There was absolutely no way that he was making the speed he was making under sail and having been fooled once I was having none of it and stood on (as required by ColRegs for two vessels under motor in that circumstance) forcing him to duck our stern.

At that point he gave up and put his sails away!

There was a third yacht astern of both of us who had been, I guess, trying to find the best strategy for making progress under sail or motor and sail. After several zig zags, they too gave it up as a bad job. They were bigger than us and the other guy and were able to make a bit better speed so they got ahead but not by a lot.

By now, we were all struggling badly to make any progress at all. We all had the same thought - forget what the tide should be doing and get as close inshore as we dared. That made all the difference and made it to the entrance into Dover in, by now, very challenging sea conditions.

It can often be a roller coaster ride into and out of the harbour at Dover but this was the most challenging one yet. We had to cross a big sea with 2 to 3 metre short steep waves beam on to get into the harbour. To make matters worse, we had to wait, bows on into the sea with just enough power to give steerage way, for a ferry to enter before we could follow him in. It was a bit too exciting but we made it in without any damage and with remarkably little gear flying around below deck.

That was the day all over bar the beer. And we didn't go wild on the beer, having just a couple of pints (and dinner) at Cullins Yard before retiring early.

The decision had already been made that unless there was a drastic improvement in the forecast, we'd be using our rest day today in Dover instead of later in the week. It's a decision not without potentual downsides if the weather isn't as forecast over the next few days but with conditions predicted to be as bad today as they were towards the end of yesterday, we'd struggle to make Sovereign Harbour at Eastbourne, the next available port, in daylight, if indeed we made it at all.

Tomorrow looks a little better. Not a lot better but enough of an improvement to make an attempt to reach Eastbourne viable. We've also had a look at the option of crossing over to the French coast but with the tide times and the wind forecast it doesn't really work.

So we're currently hoping to clear out of Dover bright and early in the morning for what promises to be a slog, and probably a slog under motor at that, to Eastbourne. Deja bloody Vu because it's exactly what Glen and I were faced with nearly a year ago.

It'll be worth it though as it will position us nicely for an improvement, hopefully, in the weather from Wednesday onwards.

The track and key log points from yesterday ...