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!