2018 Summer Cruise day 14

Fixing boats in paradise (part 2)

The pump on the heads (marine toilet to landlubbers) has been playing up for some time. We've put up with it being stiff and with the valve occasionally not sealing allowing "water" to flow back into the bowl but it's been getting worse lately do I decided to dismantle it again and have another go at fixing it.

In the process of taking the top plate off and removing the plunger, I spotted the main cause of the problem. Some heavy handed gorilla (and it wasn't me) has at some point twisted the pump handle anti-clockwise instead of clockwise from the locked position and buggered up the plastic moulding.

The only way to solve the problem was obvious, the entire pump assembly would have to be replaced. So off I trotted to the local boat bits emporium where I was pleased to find they had one in stock and doubly pleased to find that it was about £15 cheaper than in the UK (mainly due to there being no VAT).

With the new pump installed, and you really don't want details or photos, all was well again. Right up until the point where I tried to switch back to fresh water flush (we'd switched to seawater flush whilst at anchor). The changeover valve has always been very stiff to operate ever since I fitted it and now it gave up the ghost and broke.

After a good swear, I pulled the relevant pipework apart and temporarily permanently plumbed the flush to the seawater intake. Even in the marina, the water is so clean that I'm happy to pump it through the loo but the valve will need changing as soon as we get home and go back on the mud berth.

A good clean up of both heads compartment and engineer ensued and that was my day over!

Dinner and a beer on board was the order of business along with a lengthy discussion about plans for the coming week. Nothing definitely decided yet so more of that anon.

Thoughts on living on the hook...

An aside while things are still fresh in the memory...

Something Jane and I are keen to do is to ween ourselves off a dependency on marinas. So three days on the hook and using the dinghy to get ashore for supplies was good practice.

There's no problem with life aboard Pagan at anchor. Even with slightly less than ideal conditions (It was fairly breezy) nobody felt at all unhappy bobbing about in the bay at La Grande Greve.

However, we did have a number of issues...

We currently have no means of knowing exactly how much water is in the tank. After a few days that starts to loom large in the skippery brain. A simple sight tube would be easy to add to the system, a proper sender and gauge would be better still. One or the other is needed asap.

Our only means of charging the batteries off grid is the engine. Had we remained on the hook for even one more day I'd have had to run the engine for a few hours which isn't good for the engine or the wallet. We need at least one or preferably several solar panels.

The Avon Rover 3.1 dinghy i acquired for a song from a friend of dad's is simply too big for the boat. There's no way it can be inflated on board and it's too heavy to be carried up a beach. The roundtail dinghy that my friend David loaned us last summer when our old dinghy was damaged is an ideal size but lacks the buoyancy at the stern to carry a modern 4 stroke outboard.

So the 3.1 needs to be sold on and a suitable transom stern dinghy acquired.

Carrying the dinghy up the beach was an effort for three of us. It would have been a real chore for two. Transom wheels are a must.

I had a planning fail of fairly epic proportions with the whole excursion ashore. We should have been ashore at least two hours earlier, we should have checked the state of the tide when we got ashore and we should have made the effort to carry the dinghy all the way up the beach.

As a result, our time ashore was rushed when, with better planning, we could have had most of the day to explore Sark. It's a lesson learnt and in my defence this was our first time going ashore from an anchorage. We'll do it better next time!

Anchoring is a pain in the bottom at the moment. It's sufficiently troublesome to be off putting.

The first problem is that the venerable CQR is not self launching. It has to be man, or woman, handled off the bow roller. It's heavy and neither of the ladies is comfortable standing on the foredeck when the boat is bobbing around. Nor is either of them at all keen on doing the cockpit end of the job unfortunately.

So a self launching anchor is on the shopping list.

The next problem is a combination of the probably past it's use by date chain and the manual anchor windlass.

The chain is getting rusty, especially towards the little used last ten or fifteen meters that normally lurks undisturbed in the chain locker. It doesn't run out or recover cleanly on the windlass gypsy. It tends to jam or kink or otherwise seek to frustrate the efforts of the foredeck crew.

If we can afford to do nothing else, we simply must replace the chain asap. And we need more than 50m while we're at it. We had 45m out to get a 3:1 scope at HW in La Grande Greve which was adequate for the conditions and holding (reckoned to be very good at that end of the bay). Had the wind got up or, worse, changed direction we'd have needed a good deal more. So 80m I think plus a goodly length of warp too.

Even with good chain, recovering 40 or 50 metres of chain with the manual windlass is going to be bloody hard work. It's also slow work. It's a disincentive to anchoring out and worse it's a disincentive to lifting the hook and shifting if we haven't got the pick down in the right spot first time. We did shift the anchor in La Grande Greve after we'd been sat there a while (because we'd dropped back too close to another boat) but there was no enthusiasm for the job!

So an electric anchor windlass is also moved up the desirables shopping list. And coupled with a self launching and stowing (another issue with the CQR) anchor, a remote control and a chain counter, anchoring will be as easy as sailing into a bay, picking your spot and pressing a button. Like what we all enviously watched other people doing over the last few days. Gits!

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!