2011 starts here: Back to France
25 May 2011
To France again
Once again we're engaging in the folly of taking a small, tender yacht 600 miles into the prevailing wind to get to the delightful Gulf of Morbihan for their wooden boat festival, which this year is expecting 1200 wooden boats of all shapes and sizes to assemble for sailing and junketing.
Marcita has had the benefit of the great Michael Emmett working on her. We took her back to the wood, he caulked several seams, and put bolts through the hull round the mast to stop the garboards moving. She's dry so far. We bless him daily.
But the consistency of the adverse winds has been remarkable. Our course from Dover has been a steady 220 to 240 degrees, and so has the wind. Of the 80 hours it took us from Brighton to Brest, for only 15 of those hours was the wind more than 15 degrees off the nose. So we've been motorsailing just off the wind and then tacking for hours and days, which is not what we like at all.
Day One: Levington to Dover.
It all started well with a SW to get us to Black Deep, which was a beat, but just as we were turning into Foulger's Gat, looking forward to a reach, a windfarm boat asked us to go on to Fisherman's, another hour of beating. I hope Foulger's isn't going to be closed for good. But then we had a glorious beam reach past Ramsgate to Dover. So far so good.
Day two: Dover to Brighton.
Here beginneth the slog. W4-5 wind dead ahead. We were grinding along all right on the autohelm, but when we arrived at Beachy Head it was horrendous, each big wave knocking her back, and now F6 on the dial. With a similar forecast for the next two days we decided to go home, to try again on thursday.
Day three: Brighton to St. Peter Port.
We were due to leave Brighton at midnight to take the west-going tide with a favourable forecast, but at 2300 it was still blowing and drizzling unpleasantly. But we braved it and were rewarded with calmish conditions for the first few hours, except that we had the main halyard caught round the radar reflector, and couldn't free it in the dark. With the dawn we fixed it, but the wind was still dead ahead, and we hunkered down for Cherbourg. Spring tides got us there ahead of schedule, and ten miles out we decided to go for the Alderney race, although we had missed three hours of the 4 -5 kn tide. That was ok, but we were worried about the channel into St. Peter Port, which would probably have turned before we got there. It did, and we hammered the last few miles, with the harbour wall in plain view, making no progress at all. But at 10 o'clock at night the harbour master came out and found us a berth.
Day four: St. Peter Port to Brest.
This section was all about the Chenal du Four, which can only be taken on the ebb, and we had to make a consistent 5 kn for 110 miles to catch it. BUT, the westerlies, still dead on the nose, meant that the favourable tide was less strong than the unfavourable. Also, because we were fed up with beating, we decided to start by sailing and tacking, but of course that increases the distance, and after two hours we'd only made 7 miles, and resigned ourselves to motorsailing again. Anxious times as we approached Le Four to turn the corner, expecting 3 - 4 kn of tide, and getting 1.5. Towards Le Conquet the tide turned - 3 kn and the wind against us. Should we try for the Baie des Blancs Sablons to sit it out, or should we brazen it out with the motor on full blast. We were so cross with the weather by now that we decided to blast on, cutting inside the light on the corner, and made it round, just.
Well now it was downwind for the 15 miles to Brest, and to prove that we weren't defeated by the foul ride we'd had so far we put up the spinnaker and floated along for a couple of hours.