Tin Tin's Sailing Calendar

Tuesday 25 August 2009

St Malo

We set sail from St Helier at 1100 with a light southerly wind and the soft remnants of a long swell. We sailed out to Passage Rock in hot sunshine, glad to feel the breeze, and then set our course for the NW Minquiers cardinal buoy. The tide was setting west with all the power of Springs, and so we ferry glided our way south.

At the buoy I discovered that the SW Minquiers was wrongly shown on the Navionics Chart plotter and correctly on the paper charts, so we changed course to verify the exact lat long position.

Then we motorsailed to St Malo until the exciting rock-scape grew into view and we passed the Grande Jardin lighthouse and exclaimed in awe at the view of the old City. The high walls with beautiful elegant tall Parisian townhouses lined up behind and staring out to sea.

We were the last boat to enter the lock, and were hoisted many metres up into the huge stonewalled City Basin.

Sunday 23 August 2009

Cross Channel a Deux

Having had a hectic weekend with the U2 360 concert on Saturday and vast amounst of grass cutting and maintenance on Sunday we finally headed for St Mawes on Monday mrning arriving about 1730. Got out the dinghy and shopped in Spar before eating on board. Blissfull.

Tuesday dawned and we headed to Falmouth for an Almanac and bits and pieces before setting sail at 1400 for Guernsey some 120 miles to the South East.

This was not without some trepidation on both our parts - it was the first Channel crossing that we had done double-handed. The forecast for SW 4-5 occasionally 6 added a bit of extra spice, but the skies were clear and we settled into a nice close reach at 7.5 knots in 14 -16 knots of true wind in a relatively calm sea (normal white horses everywhere of course)

Night fell and Anne stood the watch from 2100- 2400 calling me occasionally for the shipping. The star lit night was wonderful, and we saw many shooting stars. I took the next watch from 1230 - 0430 and enjoyed my solo time, only once shining a poweful torch on our sail and then bearing away as a large ship passed on a close course ahead of us. On Anne's next watch the wind died and we motorsailed to arrive at the North of Guernsey before the tide began to ebb south. We sailed down past La Platte to Herm Island at 0830 and took the narrow rocky channel across to Herm, anchoring in brilliant sunshine between Herm and Jethou.


Here we walked round Herm, still rather exhausted and headachey from the long night, but exhilarated to have acheived the crossing. We came across Belvoir Bay and dashed into the clear cool water to swim. This sorted out all tiredness and left us feeling in great shape for the rest of the walk round the island. We retired to Laros and read and snoozed until 5pm when we took another narrow passage through the reefs to St Peter Port where we rafted up for the night.