My cousin Roger joined us in Guernsey for a few days for the legs to Jersey and then on to St Malo. Forecast for the day was sunny with a light breeze from the North West. We stopped off in Sark for a few hours for lunch and to work the tides to our favour. We dinghied across and climbed the cliff to walk into the village for about 3 hours. In that time Songbird did 9nm without us (I left the instruments on) as we were close to a tidal stream on the mooring. On arriving back at the dinghy the tide had dropped an enormous amount and the dinghy was taught at the end of a 6m tether. I had to abseil down the rock face to retrieve it and row around to pick up Shar and Roger before heading back to the boat. In for a quick swim...brass monkeys again and then set sail for Jersey (with a bit of motor).
On the way across Shar noticed something in the water off our starboard quarter, which was swimming slowly towards us, I turned the boat around and put us into a hove to position. It was a basking shark about 12 foot long (see photos) which swam right up to the boat and swam underneath the bow....absolutely amazing. That made our day....the shark swam off, so we continued on our way across to Jersey. The tide was running particularly fast as it was top of the spring tide, we came across so may submerged craypot buoys that were being dragged under in the current. Craypots at home are a pain but this was something else, every swill in the water was treated as a potential pot as we picked our way to St Hellier. At least it was a clear day and sunny skies which made it easier. On arriving in St Hellier we rafted up in a queue waiting for the gates to open in the marina. Once the gates opened, it was a free for all, as the French bolted through to try and grab the best spots, lesson learnt on French etiquette. We rafted up against another Dufour 40 near the entrance and had a bit of trouble as the prop had become tangled in weed and wouldn't open in reverse. Fortunately many hands were available to wrangle us into place. I pulled on the wetsuit, a quick dive and the problem was sorted, funny the water wasn't cold....I don't want to know why?, it wasn't to clean either.