Category: Blog

After a fantastic downwind sail we tacked in to the harbour at Porto de Corme, let out the anchor and drank the traditional tinkers coffee (coffee with a shot of Baileys, tradition since we anchored in Tinkers Hole some four months ago). Shortly after Jake came over and invited us all over for a beer with Lucy and him on their boat “Ragtime”. Jake’s grandfather had lent them his boat so they left Alderney, sailed south and are now enjoying themselves here in Galicia. The next evening we invited them over for Heidi made brownies.
The second day Heidi and Neill made use of the “Max Dinghy Taxi” service to take their bikes to the shore and then take a ride through the surrounding countryside. We left the fishing village of Porte de Corme via the steepest road out. Straight up a concrete track to the hills above and a huge windpark. 64 wind generators spread across the countryside. Apparently they generate about 18GwH of electricity a year. We commented on the comparison to our 100 watt wind generator on board. After an enjoyable ride along forest tracks, roads and trails, we reached a 16 meter high column on a summit. We walked up the 160 steps to the top and, when Heidi found the trapdoor at the top open, she was out next to the statue taking photos. She doesn’t know what seasickness or fear of heights is. Our track is at https://www.gpsies.com/map.do?fileId=vsofbnptcapsemro

Back in town, we found Max at a cafe where he was using their Internet and electricity in return for buying two cappuccinos a day. We also found the local supermarket and restocked the boat – especially the wine cellar. At €1.59 a bottle you have to lay up reserves.
High waves were forecast for the next day so we decided on a “lazy, doing nothing day”. We visited the market and managed to spend €25 buying vegetables and cheese and bread from the locals. We asked for potatoes from one lady and she just tipped the whole box in a bag and said “three Euros”. We bought some onions we didn’t need because Neill liked the way they were platted together. But for one Euro they are a nice decoration. We also filled the water tanks from the tap on the beach, showered using the showers on the beach, mended a broken rucsac, repaired a puncture, replaced a broken tap cleaned the boat and worked out how much power the fridge used. A great and successful day. Max once again drank two cappucinos.
And then in the evening Max noticed that the dinghy was upside down which meant the outboard motor was upside down in saltwater. Damn! At least the motor was still attached to the dinghy. Everything washed with fresh water. Spark plug out. Lots of washing petrol through the system but no success. Neill went to bed very unhappy.
The next morning and Heidi said “shall we look at the engine?” Oil change, petrol change and (Heidi’s great idea) WD40 in the air intake and combustion chamber. And it ran! Took Max for his capuccinos, invited the german neighbours over for coffee and Heidi started making scones. Life was great again.
Neill decided to try and locate the “strange smell” and discovered that the sewage tank under the front beds had leaked. The leak had run under the tank, under the floor, over the spare anchor, under the water tank and in to the bilge. Another good excuse to dismantle the boat and clean everything. This was not the day we had planned,

Tomorrow we plan on sailing for a change. We’ll let you know what happens.

We sailed from Morlaix and then around the coast of Brittany finally leaving the Channel and entering the Atlantic. Now it was time to wait for a suitable weather window to cross the notorious Bay of Biscay. As we sailed past Brest it was obvious that the time to go was “Now”. We were surrounded by boats with spinnakers flying all heading south. A look at the weather forecasts confirmed that we had three to four days of perfect conditions ahead of us.

We put in to Sainte Evette to fill up with water and food, and drink a last cup of french Cappuccino. They had a Lidl supermarket outside of town so we had a forty minute walk there and back to do the shopping. The walk there was fun but, fully packed, we were happy when we reached the harbour on the way back.

In the afternoon we weighed anchor and headed south on a bearing of 216° heading for the north west corner of Spain. The wind was behind us, there was little swell and we were making over five knots. 300 miles felt like a long way but we were optimistic that “after three times sleeping” we should be seeing spanish hills and forests.

At some point a pod of dolphins turned up to play. They were all around us and surfing the surrounding waves. One time we were looking straight at four dolphins looking out of a wave next to us and probably wondering what we were doing in the middle of their ocean.

Heidi took the first shift, I took over in the middle of the night and Max sailed us in to the dawn. At some time we sailed into fog. No stars, no moon and glad that there was so little shipping in the Bay.

During the day the fog burnt off and the sun came out. We turned down wind, poled out the Genoa and sailed straight down wind seeing only one warship in the distance and a sail in the evening. So much space and no one but us and a few dolphins .

By midnight the wind had picked up and we were still sailing downwind. A gust from the side backwinded the mainsail and the windvane lost control. “All hands on deck!” even Heidi who had been in bed for about five minutes. We stowed the Genoa and reefed the mainsail during which we managed to rip the first reefs (already damaged) line. No problem – we have two more reefs so we put in the second reef.

On our second full day there was less sun but still plenty of wind so we let out a little genoa and once again were making good speed straight downwind. A second day running we achieved over one hundred miles in 24 hours. At one point the windvane broke but we are now experts at running repairs and quickly had “her” back up and running. In the morning we saw a japanese tanker and in the afternoon a bulk carrier. We called the carrier on the radio and asked for a weather update. “Force 4 from the north” was the short east European sounding answer which was exactly what we wanted to hear. Max was still trailing a fishing line behind us and once again catching nothing. Heidi was either immersed in her book or creating great food – no cruise ship can compete with our food. And Neill was planning or sleeping.

The east European weather forecast was a lie. The wind turned steadily from the west driving us in to the bay. Before dark we set both sails to the port side and then increasingly turned up wind during the night. By dawn we were hard on the wind and even then we couldn’t round the last headland. Neill tacked away from the coast, left instructions for a later tack and went to sleep leaving Heidi and Max to get us to the port. After 325 miles we were just off Ria de Cadeira when the wind dropped completely so we motored the last mile in to the bay and anchored in Spain three days and one and a half hours after leaving Brittany.

Yeh! We have crossed Biscay.

From St. Peter Port (on the Island of Guernsey to Morlaix (in Brittany, France) it is only 72  nautical miles as the crow flies. Unfortunately we are in a boat so have to sail around rocks and islands so that increase the distance to about 78 nm. Even more unfortunately we were in a sailing boat and  had the wind against us almost all the way and a tide against us six hours in 12. The result was that we sailed 136 nm!

Leaving the marina, we had to sail almost back to Sark (1) against the tide before we could tack back south of Guernsey. A friendly tide took us well out to the west (2) and would have been perfect – if we had of been heading for England. But we were heading for France so we turned south (3). The tide was pushing us back East and when the wind dropped we just began to float back to where we had come from – and towards a reef. Some time in the night we switched the motor on and motored across the becalmed, black sea (4). In the early hours of the morning we felt a breath of wind so switched the motor off and started to sail (5). We were heading out to sea again but we were sailing and bad sailing is always better than good motoring.

Then things got crazy. Boat sailed, Wind dropped or changed direction. Boat stopped or went backwards. Try new tack and do it all again (6). At least by now we had a full moon to see  that we were going nowhere. And on Max’s watch we had a “close encounter” with a racing yacht.

In the early morning we tacked again turning south east and suddenly everything worked magically (7). The wind slowly veered west and the current picked up moving us west. With a tiny bit of sail trimming we sailed past the sand banks, through the reefs and directly in to Morlaix Bay and the river mouth where we anchored after an adventurous 30 hour passage.

 

We are sailors but we are also mountain bikers so if we can’t sail, we are just as happy to go biking. We are currently in Guernsey and the weather forecast is talking about gusts up to 40 knots and three meter high waves so we – sensibly – decided to go for a bike ride. We found a GPS route around the north of the Island so, after unpacking and folding out our bikes, we set off to follow it.

It became obvious that the route was suitable for road bikes so we started to add in our own little diversions always following the coast as closely as possible. This was much more fun and allowed us to see much more rocky coastline, a few forts from Napoleonic times and lots of German bunkers from WW2.

The sections of deep soft sand and the head on storm also increased the training effect considerably. It is not often that you need to tack in to the wind on a bike.

On the far side of the Island we watched motorbikes and buggies racing on the exposed sand at low tide. There was some serious drifting going on and we saw one or two tumbles. It was obvious why there were two ambulances on standby.

Bikes are the perfect way to see the Island. Almost all our route was inaccesible to cars and it was much too far to walk in an afternoon. Once again we were so thankful to have our bikes with us.

Link to the route at GPSies is at https://www.gpsies.com/map.do?fileId=qdopbvutwhwtggqq.

Having reached Chichester and spent a fun and productive week with my sister it was now time to head further South. We began by using the tide to sail back through the Solent to Yarmouth where we anchored just before dark to wait for the next mornings tide. We anchored just outside a tidal rip and Max, after many nights of bad anchoring experience in Australia, was very unhappy and threatened to stay up to watch the tide turn at 02:00. We know our Rocna and we all slept well (even Max) to find the yacht still at anchor the next morning.

When you cross the Channel you have to take account of the tides which begin by pushing you one way and then the other. I had fun adding up the tides for each hour of our crossing and then adding an offset to arrive up tide of Cherbourg.

To begin with there was no wind so we motored and Neill slept leaving Heidi and Max (our new crew member) to avoid the large vessels that populate this busy sea route. Max had his drone on-board and was willing to risk a start (and landing) while out at sea which resulted in this spectacular video.

By mid channel we were well off the “direct route” having drifted with the tide as expected. The trick here is to keep your cool and believe that on the second part of the journey you are going to be pushed back on to course.

Later the wind came up and we were able to sail our planned course. As France came in to view we received the confirmation that we were going to take the tide straight in to Cherbourg harbour. I love it when a plan works out and the wind and tides take you where you want to go.