This was our longest cruise away from base to date ... and for reasons I'll come back to later almost certainly our last "long" cruise for some years to come.
The leg down channel was not, it has to be said, a pleasure cruise. Dover to Sovereign Harbour was, for the second year running, particularly frustrating. Pagan doesn't much enjoy bashing into an F5/6 on the nose with a steep Channel chop knocking the stuffing out of her forward progress. And frankly the crew didn't enjoy it much either.
In hindsight, it was probably a little too ambitious to plan to make St Peter Port in a week. Do-able, certainly, but it put pressure on that we could have done without. That said, the overnight passage from Eastbourne to Guernsey was very satisfying (I do like night sailing!). Another time I'd make sure we had a more relaxed schedule.
Once in the Channel Islands, we were blessed with a sustained spell of astonishingly good weather. There was, perhaps, a little bit too much wind from the North East in the first week (and oh how we could have done with that wind a week earlier!) but it did little to affect our enjoyment.
It did though get a bit too windy for comfort over the middle weekend but we'd wisely cut and run back to St. Peter Port on the Thursday. That proved to be a very astute decision as St. Peter Port filled up rapidly on the Friday with everybody wanting to get into shelter over the weekend.
As detailed in the earlier posts, we felt we hadn't done Sark justice and changed our plans to go back a second time rather than move on to Jersey and St. Malo. That too proved to be good judgement. Sark is without a doubt magical.
We missed out on Herm but we didn't mind. It gives us an excuse, as if we needed one, to go back another time!
We spent a lot of time in the two marinas, more perhaps than we envisaged. But it's impossible to regret that. St. Peter Port is lively, vibrant and full of places to go, places to eat, places to drink and places to shop. Beaucette is peaceful, sheltered and has a superb restaurant (but nothing else). Each in their own way is to be highly recommended.
And now for the twist.
Swell
Only in Beaucette, and in St. Peter Port when the cill was uncovered, were we ever entirely free of the influence of a (mostly) Southerly swell. No matter what the wind conditions, no matter what the wind direction, no matter what the tide was doing, the swell made it's presence felt the whole time.
With the exception of the one night on the buoy at Havre Gosselin (Sark) it was never particularly bad or uncomfortable but it was always there. And we had near ideal weather conditions. Even so, there were times when even in the shelter of Victoria Marina in St. Peter Port the boat was swaying about sufficiently to make life on board slightly annoying if not downright unpleasant.
And I would reckon that if the wind blew up for a spell there is probably nowhere in the Balliwick of Guernsey which could be described as fully sheltered at all states of the sea and tide. It isn't a reason to avoid the islands but it does have to be considered - especially in high season when the availability of inner marina berths is at a premium. Out on the outer pontoons at St. Peter Port over the middle weekend the moored vessels were plunging about sufficiently to make life damned uncomfortable.
Despite changing our plans half way through the cruise, the crew changes worked smoothly. I am most impressed by the service provided by Flybe - being able to go onto their website and quickly change flights at minimal cost (anything up to two hours before flying although we did it several days ahead) made the change of plans very easy to execute.
The return leg was definitely more of a holiday than the outward leg. With neither myself nor Richard needing to be back for ten to twelve days, we were able to take a bit of time at the nice places along the way. Unfortunately we also had to take a bit of time at my least favourite port due to the weather.
So would we go back to the Channel Islands again? Hell yes! But there is a but. I would want to have at least six weeks to do it - two out, two there (minimum) and two back. And preferably longer in the middle. And it has to be acknowledged that on another visit the weather might not be as good, indeed it's unlikely it would be as good, which could make all the difference.
Looking ahead, we learnt a great deal from this cruise.
The first is that we simply have to upgrade Pagan's anchoring gear. Hauling 45m of somewhat rusty chain aboard with the old manual windlass was a killer job. We want, as soon as we can afford it, a self launching anchor, new (and longer) chain and an electric windlass.
The second is that we need to sort out our dinghy and outboard(s). The borrowed roundtail dinghy proved an excellent servant but can't really carry the 4 stroke outboard all that well. The Avon 3.1 I bought cheaply earlier in the year has proved to be just too big.
So we want a transom dinghy around the 2.7m mark with three chambers. Not easy to find these days but I've found one. And I want to fit a pair of lightweight removable davits in due course. The dinghy will get flip down transom wheels on it as carrying the damn thing up the beach nearly killed us!
As for the outboards, the borrowed Mariner was reliable and effective (but as mentioned too heavy for the roundtail) and our 2 stroke Tohatsu went from being ultra-reliable to refusing to start at all at whim. It needs a major strip down and overhaul of the fuel system. It'll get it before next year. The bigger Mariner 4 stroke I acquired from a friend also needs sorting out as I plan to continue to carry both outboards.
All of this will have to wait on finance being available. We are very nearly skint and by the time we've had one final excursion for ten days or so next month and had Pagan hauled ashore for the winter the sailing coffers will be empty.
My mission from September, for as long as necessary, will be to earn some serious pennies to refill the coffers and then save up the money to do the ongoing improvements and upgrades to Pagan and the kit we carry.
And as that is likely to involve me being back in proper gainful full time employment for a couple of years or more, we are going to be back to holiday sailing and weekending from next year for the forseeable future.
And that leads to one final decision that has been taken - when we relaunch next spring we'll be going back onto a swinging mooring and giving up the mud berth. It has served it's purpose for the last three or four years but the logisitical problems of only being able to get on and off the berth on Spring tides don't sit well with getting good use from the boat when we can only take a maximum of two weeks holiday at a time.
Oh and a final final bit of thinking is that we're thinking of not going very far afield next year. We, and especially Jane (unprompted), have identified a need to improve our skills in a number of areas. Jane in particular feels she really needs to get to grips with helming the boat when we're anchoring or picking up buoys (but probably not, she says, in the confines of marinas!). We've talked about having a year where we devote ourselves to learning to handle the boat better and as yet we haven't done it. So maybe next year will be the year
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