fireball
New member
My first sailing trip across the channel was last yr with Galadriel on his Etap ... a great way to get the experience and awareness of where we were going whilst someone else skippers.
This year I was going to do the trip in my boat ...
Dropped the mooring at 0415 friday in Chichester harbour ... motored out with 16 knots apparent through the harbour - great I thought, it'll be a bit lumpy, but doable ....
Got to West Pole at the entrance and put the main up with 2 reefs (wind was approx 20 knots apparent as expected) - thought I'd shake out a reef later ...
Radioed TOME and had a quick convo - he was going to head down the solent to come out through the needles ... we decided that Wind over tide through the needles was going to be too rough so we'd just head straight out...
Got to the NAB (we were quite a way to the east) and went down below to make a mark on the chart ... filled the date in on the log and came back up pretty rapidly! That was my first of 4 bouts of being sick.
Decided we weren't making enough progress (180 @ 3-4 knots!!) so put the motor on and opened up to 6knots - didn't bother with the motoring cone though - we weren't going to argue with any big boats. Decision was to continue.....
It was very rough, lee rail under most of the way, plenty of waves over the top, starboard window has a leak, but we ploughed on. Swapped helms ~ every hour ... I was fine for most of the time, but just couldn't eat anything.. fairly early on, Paul went down to make bacon sarnies ... well, Paul enjoyed his, and the fish enjoyed Michaels and mine ...
We tacked for one ship and bore away for another, but other than that we held our course and averaged 180 the whole way.
I don't recall what time we sighted land, but we didn't make any course better than 180 so at around 15Nm NE of Barfleur we tacked and sailed along the French coast against the tide ... By this time Michael and I were completely knackered, both of us being seasick and unable to eat anything. Paul was superb, but equally didn't have anything to eat, so I sent Paul down to get an apple each, the sea was a lot calmer and I thought I'd be able to cope with one of those! We'd had water to drink all the way across, but even so I was dehydrated.
At around 1830 with 18Nm to go - bearing 210, we were sailing at ~290, we decided to furl the genoa and motor straight in to Cherbourg (wind pretty much on the nose) .... motored straight past Allegretto who was sailing in from Christchurch !! In to the outer harbour, dropped the main, into the inner basin, found the marina and tied up at 2200 !!! Knackered!
The marina office closes at 2300 ... french time! So showers were out, so back to the boat via the public loos for a wash ... and dinner of soup and bread ... then BED!
Log: 95.96Nm, GPS Log 91Nm ... Engine - 16.4hrs - still, gave the batteries a good charge and we had plenty of hot water!
Sat gave us time to clear up, wash the boat down (with thanks to BigNick for the loan of his hose - saved getting mine out!) and refuel - 28L @ 33euros ... breakfast out, lunch out and then dinner with the rest ... plenty of water and only a glass or two of wine for me...
Sunday trip back was a lot easier!! ... Motored out at 0515 and connected up the tiller pilot as there was no wind ... pulled a little genoa out as the apparent wind increase from astern ... by the time we'd reached the shipping lanes we'd put up full main, but continued with the motor to keep us between 6 and 7 knots SOG and around 30Nm to go we cut the engine, poled out the genoa and sailed in on a dead run for the remainder of the trip ... time taken - 12.5hrs marina to mooring, not bad for a 30'er! Average speed was 6 knots, max was 10.6 SOG (which Paul got surfing down a wave), 9.6 thru the water (which I got!). - 82Nm on both log and gps, 7.8hours on the engine ...
Picked up the mooring before the wind and drizzle set in, off the boat before it really started raining!
Certainly an interesting trip ... I won't repeat the crossing over again - not 25-30 knots on the nose ... !! It was good to see how well the boat coped with the conditions - we had a couple of minor breakages - the worst being a chip in the gelcoat in the companionway before we'd even set off ...
Chartplotter was superb - mounted on the companionway sliding hatch so easily visible.
AIS worked, although range was only 5Nm - something wrong there as we'd seen the boats we needed to avoid before the CP could display them ... I need to run the data into a computer and compare the display - strange as we were getting 10+ from the mooring...
Could do with a remote control for the CP...
Best decision was to laminate an A4 chart of the sailing area with tide times, tide flow on the back and plot our trip back - could've done with a thinner perm marker though!
Huge thankyou to the organisers - we certainly wouldn'tve entertained a crossing otherwise ... (can we have a better wind angle next year?)
another HUGE thankyou to PaulTwistAgain - a superb crew & helm, made the decisions easy and looked after the boat whilst I couldn't.
and for those who read carefully - yes I did have the engine on for 24hrs ... but we only used ~ 40L of fuel, gave the batteries a blumin good charge and have shown that the boat really can standup to more than I can!
I'll post some photos later...
This year I was going to do the trip in my boat ...
Dropped the mooring at 0415 friday in Chichester harbour ... motored out with 16 knots apparent through the harbour - great I thought, it'll be a bit lumpy, but doable ....
Got to West Pole at the entrance and put the main up with 2 reefs (wind was approx 20 knots apparent as expected) - thought I'd shake out a reef later ...
Radioed TOME and had a quick convo - he was going to head down the solent to come out through the needles ... we decided that Wind over tide through the needles was going to be too rough so we'd just head straight out...
Got to the NAB (we were quite a way to the east) and went down below to make a mark on the chart ... filled the date in on the log and came back up pretty rapidly! That was my first of 4 bouts of being sick.
Decided we weren't making enough progress (180 @ 3-4 knots!!) so put the motor on and opened up to 6knots - didn't bother with the motoring cone though - we weren't going to argue with any big boats. Decision was to continue.....
It was very rough, lee rail under most of the way, plenty of waves over the top, starboard window has a leak, but we ploughed on. Swapped helms ~ every hour ... I was fine for most of the time, but just couldn't eat anything.. fairly early on, Paul went down to make bacon sarnies ... well, Paul enjoyed his, and the fish enjoyed Michaels and mine ...
We tacked for one ship and bore away for another, but other than that we held our course and averaged 180 the whole way.
I don't recall what time we sighted land, but we didn't make any course better than 180 so at around 15Nm NE of Barfleur we tacked and sailed along the French coast against the tide ... By this time Michael and I were completely knackered, both of us being seasick and unable to eat anything. Paul was superb, but equally didn't have anything to eat, so I sent Paul down to get an apple each, the sea was a lot calmer and I thought I'd be able to cope with one of those! We'd had water to drink all the way across, but even so I was dehydrated.
At around 1830 with 18Nm to go - bearing 210, we were sailing at ~290, we decided to furl the genoa and motor straight in to Cherbourg (wind pretty much on the nose) .... motored straight past Allegretto who was sailing in from Christchurch !! In to the outer harbour, dropped the main, into the inner basin, found the marina and tied up at 2200 !!! Knackered!
The marina office closes at 2300 ... french time! So showers were out, so back to the boat via the public loos for a wash ... and dinner of soup and bread ... then BED!
Log: 95.96Nm, GPS Log 91Nm ... Engine - 16.4hrs - still, gave the batteries a good charge and we had plenty of hot water!
Sat gave us time to clear up, wash the boat down (with thanks to BigNick for the loan of his hose - saved getting mine out!) and refuel - 28L @ 33euros ... breakfast out, lunch out and then dinner with the rest ... plenty of water and only a glass or two of wine for me...
Sunday trip back was a lot easier!! ... Motored out at 0515 and connected up the tiller pilot as there was no wind ... pulled a little genoa out as the apparent wind increase from astern ... by the time we'd reached the shipping lanes we'd put up full main, but continued with the motor to keep us between 6 and 7 knots SOG and around 30Nm to go we cut the engine, poled out the genoa and sailed in on a dead run for the remainder of the trip ... time taken - 12.5hrs marina to mooring, not bad for a 30'er! Average speed was 6 knots, max was 10.6 SOG (which Paul got surfing down a wave), 9.6 thru the water (which I got!). - 82Nm on both log and gps, 7.8hours on the engine ...
Picked up the mooring before the wind and drizzle set in, off the boat before it really started raining!
Certainly an interesting trip ... I won't repeat the crossing over again - not 25-30 knots on the nose ... !! It was good to see how well the boat coped with the conditions - we had a couple of minor breakages - the worst being a chip in the gelcoat in the companionway before we'd even set off ...
Chartplotter was superb - mounted on the companionway sliding hatch so easily visible.
AIS worked, although range was only 5Nm - something wrong there as we'd seen the boats we needed to avoid before the CP could display them ... I need to run the data into a computer and compare the display - strange as we were getting 10+ from the mooring...
Could do with a remote control for the CP...
Best decision was to laminate an A4 chart of the sailing area with tide times, tide flow on the back and plot our trip back - could've done with a thinner perm marker though!
Huge thankyou to the organisers - we certainly wouldn'tve entertained a crossing otherwise ... (can we have a better wind angle next year?)
another HUGE thankyou to PaulTwistAgain - a superb crew & helm, made the decisions easy and looked after the boat whilst I couldn't.
and for those who read carefully - yes I did have the engine on for 24hrs ... but we only used ~ 40L of fuel, gave the batteries a blumin good charge and have shown that the boat really can standup to more than I can!
I'll post some photos later...
