Category: Uncategorized

Monday 3 April

Ever helpful Philippe was on the marina first thing on Monday morning to assess the damage and decide the appropriate course of action. Quickly realising that a big ‘ammer was not the solution, he went away to make arrangements with one of the welding team and the crane operators, as well as preparing a quotation of costs for our insurers.

Back at the Capitainerie, Mate organised an appointment, in French, on the phone, to see a local doctor the same afternoon (not like in the UK), about a suspected infection in her knee. The diagnosis and prescribed antibiotics resulted in a bill of nearly €100 (also unlike the UK!) My crew recovered from the shock with afternoon tea and pastries, a beer for Skipper, in the sunshine on the old quay at the Port de l’Epi, before coming home for supper onboard.

Sunday 2 April

Mate stood a long watch, in the middle of which she was startled by a flashing light ahead that she hadn’t noticed previously. She realised that Jeanny’s track was not allowing for the tide pushing me too far South, and too near the Casquets rocks that lie just Northwest of Alderney, so she made some adjustments and kept a more alert eye on my progress. She was spooked by a vessel appearing on AIS that we seemed to run over, eventually deciding it was our own signal, that is not supposed to show on the chart plotter screen. Needless to say, this caused great hilarity for Skipper when he took handover at 0500.

Mate stayed on deck to watch the cycle complete, from sunset through moonset in a beautiful orange, like a softer sunset, around 0100, to daybreak, an almost imperceptible lightening of the sky, and dawn, before sunrise. By 0615 she couldn’t stay awake any longer, and was suffering stage one hypothermia, in spite of a warming ginger tea thoughtfully provided by Skipper. She shivered, fully dressed and tucked into a winter duvet and blanket, for quite a while until finally falling asleep. Skipper allowed her to sleep until we were a couple of miles from the entrance to Cherbourg’s Grande Rade, the outside harbour, and we enjoyed a lovely last stretch of sailing along the French coast.

Inside the huge fortified walls it was very calm and sheltered, so the sails were dropped and furled, and lines and fenders prepared for my docking. Skipper manoeuvred me neatly into the last Allures berth on the H pontoon of Chantereyne marina, and my crew did ‘happy hour’ to tidy me up before they slotted back into a domestic routine. Later they were surprised to discover that the Capitainerie (harbour office) was closed, as they were still on winter operating hours until Easter. Just as well I have such a lovely shower onboard.

Saturday 1 April

So, the promised easy overnight passage of 60M to make landfall on the Isles of Scilly in daylight didn’t materialise. Instead we departed the lovely Helford river at 0815, and once clear of the channel, Mate set a course of 100˚ ESE for an estimated 30 hours at sea to cover 150M to Cherbourg. Conditions were calm at first, so Trevver ran for the first few hours, meaning Jeanny could join him and keep me on course with minimum intervention from my crew. In spite of the forecast, when the wind did fill in it was right behind me, which isn’t my favourite point of sail, but Skipper hauled up my mainsail with a first reef and preventer. He tried the staysail too, but the main blanketed it and it soon got rolled back in. Mate spotted a shower sneaking up behind us, thanks to the giveaway rainbow, and the crew got big coats on just in time to avoid a soaking.

The wind increased a little further, all the way to a F4, building a swell, so I was surfing down 3-metre rollers, sailing properly now with the staysail reset. The crew soon settled into a fairly regular watch pattern, ensuring they both rested below while off duty. We enjoyed several dolphin shows, the best being during one of the Mate’s watches, when a family of four entertained her for an hour and a quarter. The largest, nicknamed ‘Dad’, would roll onto his side parallel with my hull, as if mirroring my silver flank, and look at us; ‘Mum’ and the ‘little girl’ would swim together under the bow, as if Mum was teaching her how to play safely with yachts, while ‘bigger brother’ played dare by darting towards, then away from us over and over again. Once he rode the crest of a long roller just in front of us, jumping three times as the wave broke. Magical and humbling.

A quarter moon had risen well before a beautiful sunset heralded a stunning starry canopy overnight.

Friday 31 March

The moorings master was spotted doing his rounds, but we escaped charge and later decided to stay a second night. Although the trees are still bare, as at Fowey, the Helford is very pretty. Exposed rock and undergrowth adds much colour, while elegant houses and landscaped gardens enhance every view. My crew enjoyed the free cabaret laid on by a large workboat, whose crew and pair of divers were working hard to service and clean the mooring buoys ready for the new season.
My people took advantage of daylight to rearrange our mooring by setting up a bridle warp around my bow – as they should have done last night. Leaning forward over the dolphin, Skipper noticed considerable further damage (from the accident in Falmouth) to my bow roller, rendering my anchoring mechanism unusable, a serious problem when there aren’t any marinas in Scilly, and ‘slinging the hook’ will be our main method of securing ourselves around the islands.
Plans were changed once again, as a fair forecast to Scilly was also a fair forecast to Cherbourg: it being Friday afternoon, a hurried e-mail was dispatched to the boatyard where I was built, followed up with a phone call, and initial arrangements were soon in place for emergency repairs to be carried out the following week. Skipper prepared a detailed passage plan, and it was decided to depart for a longer-than-usual channel crossing the following morning.

Thursday 30 March

Both crew and Bertha set off on the 5km-walk to Sainsbury’s to stock up in case there’s no shopping to be found in the Islands, and replenish the dwindling supply of their favourite red wine while it’s on offer. It’s a pleasant stroll along the estuary, and a slow pull back when Bertha’s fully loaded.

Mate cleaned the heads while water was plentiful, due to Skipper washing down my decks and then filling the tanks just faster than she was emptying them, and then went off for a last land shower before slipping the lines and heading across the bay to the Helford river. It was showery, with a cold wind and a lumpy sea; just as well it was only a few miles, and the crew were grateful for the shelter of my smart new porch.

Looming out of poor visibility in the mouth of the river was a huge superyacht, My Amadea, far too posh to want to say hello to li’l ol’ me, so we pottered on past into calm water and pretty views, all the way up to the famous Frenchman’s Creek for a look, before we went back to Helford Pool to pick up a convenient visitor’s mooring. By this time it was nearly dark, and the crew struggled to secure the chain around one of my bow cleats, over a pair of fenders to avoid it scraping my hull all night. As it was, the pick-up buoy bumped into me repeatedly instead, but otherwise no wind ensured a peaceful sleep.

Wednesday 29 March

I felt the patter of tiny raindrops on my decks this morning, so Mate got the sewing machine out and ran up a set of smart new black fender socks from one of the rolls of knitted tubing she’s got stashed in her supplies store. Next she used some of the porch offcut to make a new cover for the large hatch over the master cabin…after Skipper let the old one blow off into Plymouth over the Winter. Meanwhile, he resealed the piping for the Electroscan heads waste treatment system, so that will work properly (and not leak – euwwgh) when we’re away from marina facilities. Then he finished installing the AIS, and walked into town for a (very short) haircut.

Tuesday 28 March

Mate decided to take the opportunity of still being in Falmouth to load up Bertha with another batch of laundry, and trundle her through town and up the hill to Bubbles for another washday [chat with Nathan, I reckon]. While she was away, Skipper took it upon himself to move me on his own down the pontoon to make room for another boat to join me: a small one, I hope, as there’s still not much space here.
It seems our helpful insurance company are happy to wait until it’s convenient for us to have the repair work done, as the damage is not integral to my hull structure and won’t deteriorate if not remedied immediately. I suppose I’ll just have to put up with showing war wounds for the time being.
The weather’s looking good for next week, so my crew have decided to head for the Isles of Scilly on Friday.

Monday 27 March

Skipper spent most of this morning with his mobile phone plugged to his ear, discussing possibilities of having me lifted out of the water, and finding someone qualified who has the time to do the work. This is the busiest time of the year for boatyards with cranes, as most owners lift their boats out of the water for the winter, and want them back in around now for the new season’s sailing. Similarly, experienced welders familiar with working in aluminium are few and far between in this country, unlike in France and the Netherlands, where metal boats are much more common. Those in the know have full order books. Skipper was somewhat frustrated to be told that a lift-out could be booked for after 7 May, and the nearest metal worker could fit us in in five or six weeks.

Thank goodness the weather was calmer today, and the evenings are now definitely longer, ensuring a happier atmosphere on board.

Sunday 26 March

At 0400, just after the clocks had sprung forward to British Summer Time, Skipper was awoken by the howling wind and put on wet weather gear to go and check I was still safe and securely tied up. He spent some time hauling extra fenders out of my sail locker, on a bow bucking more than it often does at sea, and tying them securely along the pontoon to protect my hull.

The crew had just about settled back down by 0500 when a series of huge crashes at their heads propelled them straight back into outdoor clothing and up on deck in double-quick time to see what had happened. Both the mooring lines of the little motor boat in front of me had broken – completely come apart, not chafed through, obviously not adequate for the task – one of its fenders had popped back into the cockpit and the other had broken free of its line and was floating between my bow and the edge of the pontoon. Waves were breaking frequently over the pontoon and these had lifted the boat and surged it into my stem.

Skipper grabbed one of my spare lines and managed to tie it onto the stern of the other boat, securing it to a cleat much further away down the pontoon. He then reached again across the black frothing water, the splashes regularly soaking him as the boat seemed to be trying to mount the pontoon atop the waves, to retie the boat’s own bow warp into a pair of joined bowlines to fasten it to a forward cleat. It was obvious, even in the pitch dark, that the little ship was sustaining considerable damage as it slammed repeatedly into the pontoon, with no protection left.

Grateful for daybreak, my crew surveyed the apparent damage to my bow, took some preliminary photos once the light was strong enough, and made their weary way to the ‘Welcome Booth’ of the harbour, at the top of the gangway from the marina. Lovely Anne was on duty that morning, she of a wealth of local knowledge, an empathetic manner and oodles of common sense. She listened calmly to our sorry tale, took a full report, and went straight down to the pontoon with camera and mobile phone. She surveyed both vessels and recorded the immediately visible damage to both with a series of photos.  Usually I love to pose, but on this occasion, I wasn’t feeling my best.

She was able to identify the motorboat and a swift succession of phone calls soon pinpointed the owner, who was duly summoned. As it happened, this was out of something of a hangover-slumber: it was his 30th birthday, and he’d decided the evening before that a boat was a preferable means of transport home to the car that he was in no fit state to drive…It transpired later that he had built this boat, he’s the son of one of the oyster fisherman, and has grown up around boats and the sea. One can’t help hoping that this will be a life lesson hard learned. At least he’s unlikely ever to forget this particular ‘special’ birthday.

Meanwhile, Skipper made the initial call to the insurance company, having obtained the young man’s particulars along with a humble apology. A metal-working acquaintance he’d brought with him gave a rough assessment of a couple of hundred pounds’ worth of repair work, following a lift out in a boatyard.

The weather remained windy, so willing hands were gratefully accepted to help me move into a more sheltered berth on the landward side of the marina [shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted?]. Plans for a day out having long since been aborted, my tired crew retired to my warm and comfortable saloon to lick their emotional wounds.

Saturday 25 March

My crew decided they needed to return to Falmouth Visitors’ Yacht Haven, to refill my water tanks and buy some fresh provisions, ready for the planned passage to the Isles of Scilly early next week, when the weather outlook seemed to be improving. Mate was hoping to catch an early bus to Truro tomorrow morning, to enjoy the Mothering Sunday service in the country’s youngest cathedral, and take time for a little sightseeing.

We gave my lovely big genoa (foresail) an airing for a short reach downriver in the Carrick Roads, playing tag with the local oyster fishermen whilst enjoying pleasant weather and pretty scenery. The River Fal is the only place in the UK where traditional methods of gathering shellfish are still employed: to reduce pollution and keep alive ancient skills, the men are not allowed engines and must balance sails and oars against wind and tide – a fascinating and humbling sight from my shiny, modern, all-mod-cons decks.

Mate felt brave enough to take me back into the alongside berth I’d occupied on our last visit, once Skipper had set up all the lines and fenders (I won’t embarrass him by mentioning how much quicker Mate does this: obviously a little more practice needed). We came in smoothly and soon Bertha was ready for the 10km round trip to Sainsbury’s. After supper, Mate enjoyed a well-earned long hot shower up at the facilities. Coming home, she noticed three men bring in a small motor boat just ahead of me, and was unhappy that they seemed to be very close, having tied one of their ropes over my bow line on the forward pontoon cleat. The wind was already building to a strong Easterly, blowing us onto the dock.