qsiv
New member
At long last the weather God's smiled - I had a trip with fair breeze. First this season If I recall correctly. No tacks, no gybes, no traffic in the Channel.
I had to collect the boat from Lymington and return to Jersey. After much perusal of GRIB data and the associated passage plans, Wednesday night was selected for the cross Channel dash. I extracted myself from work and with a colleague Flew to Southampton, trained to Lymington and prepared the boat for sea after spending a month in Berthons care.
By the time we had eaten and squared away supper and got the right sails set it was 20:00 at the Bridge bouy. We were momentarily tempted to shake out the reef we had in for comfort whilst we ate supper - but a couple of gusts at 30 knots true whilst we setting up the winches dissuaded us.
We forged across the channel with the log showing 8.5 to 10.5 knots most of the way. It was only in the latter stages off Cap de la Hague when we had to bear way in order not to loose too much ground to the weather going tide that we slowed to 8 knots or so. As the tide started to ebb and set to the East we hardened up and the speed built. As we entered the race with 34 knots of ENE wind the sea flattened off - it was quite eerily glass like. Soon the GPS was reporting 18.6 knots over the ground and the SOG never drpped below 10 until we clear of Sark. We carried the tide all the way down although the wind was failing as we reached Corbiere.
We were back on our berth in St Helier 12 hours 40 minutes after casting off from Lymington. The Needles - Corbiere passage took a minute or so under 11 hours which equates to an average speed of about 8.5 knots for the passage.
I had to collect the boat from Lymington and return to Jersey. After much perusal of GRIB data and the associated passage plans, Wednesday night was selected for the cross Channel dash. I extracted myself from work and with a colleague Flew to Southampton, trained to Lymington and prepared the boat for sea after spending a month in Berthons care.
By the time we had eaten and squared away supper and got the right sails set it was 20:00 at the Bridge bouy. We were momentarily tempted to shake out the reef we had in for comfort whilst we ate supper - but a couple of gusts at 30 knots true whilst we setting up the winches dissuaded us.
We forged across the channel with the log showing 8.5 to 10.5 knots most of the way. It was only in the latter stages off Cap de la Hague when we had to bear way in order not to loose too much ground to the weather going tide that we slowed to 8 knots or so. As the tide started to ebb and set to the East we hardened up and the speed built. As we entered the race with 34 knots of ENE wind the sea flattened off - it was quite eerily glass like. Soon the GPS was reporting 18.6 knots over the ground and the SOG never drpped below 10 until we clear of Sark. We carried the tide all the way down although the wind was failing as we reached Corbiere.
We were back on our berth in St Helier 12 hours 40 minutes after casting off from Lymington. The Needles - Corbiere passage took a minute or so under 11 hours which equates to an average speed of about 8.5 knots for the passage.
